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THE INDIVIDUAL 



THE INDIVIDUAL 

A Study of Life and Death 

By 

NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 

Professor of Geology in Harvard University 
and Dean of Lawrence Scientific School 




New York 

D. Appleton and Company 

1901 






Copyright, 1900 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

Gift 
W. Ii. Shoemaker 
7 S '06 



PREFACE 



Modeen science lias done much to change the 
conceptions of men as to their place in the universe. 
The ancient view that the earth and all its living 
tenants were suddenly created is passing away, and 
in its stead there is coming, in a swift and inevitable 
way, the conviction that all we see or know is but a 
part of a vast orderly procession of which we can 
discern neither the beginning nor the end. 

It needs but a slight acquaintance with the his- 
tory of man to make it clear that the best part of his 
nature, his moral and social qualities, has to a con- 
siderable extent been founded on his beliefs concern- 
ing his origin and the ways in which he has been 
controlled by the powers above him. It is evidently 
a most important question as to how far this change 
of view is likely to alter human conduct. Is it likely 
to overthrow or even to shake the institutions of 
morality, or will it serve to make them firmer than 
before? 

v 



vi THE INDIVIDUAL 

It is evidently too soon to determine in any ob- 
servational way what the answer to this question is 
to be; for, while almost all educated men have some 
knowledge of the new learning concerning man's 
place in Nature, very few so possess it and are pos- 
sessed by it that their states of mind afford any index 
as to what the result will be when it is fully shared 
by all and is the actual basis of thought and action. 
We can, however, obtain some idea as to the effect 
which this knowledge is likely to have upon the gen- 
erations to come by examining into such of the rev- 
elations of science as directly relate to the place of 
man, to see whether they are likely to lessen his sense 
of duty to himself or his fellows. It is one of the 
objects of this book to make such an inquiry. The 
main purpose, however, is to present to the reader a 
sufficient account of what his individual life means 
in the great order. 

The meaning of our several individual lives in 
relation to those of our fellow-beings and of the 
great realm is the most important of all quests. To 
attain to some understanding, however limited, of 
these matters, it is necessary first of all to obtain a 
sufficient idea of the steps by which it has come about 
that we are here as individuals with a measure of 
personal independence, serving our fellow-men and 
questioning the universe concerning our origin and 



PREFACE vii 

destiny. Above all, we need to seek knowledge as 
to the reason for the brevity of life which, seen 
nakedly, makes existence seem but a mockery. 

Because the problem of death is beyond all others 
momentous, it has the largest share of consideration 
in the following pages. As will be seen, the effort is 
to show that the brevity of life in the organic indi- 
vidual necessarily arises from the educable quality of 
all the individualities of that group; that in pro- 
portion to the advance in station of any group of 
animals and plants the duration of its members has 
to be more and more accurately fixed, until in man 
and other of the higher forms the term is as firmly 
established as are the features of the body. It is in 
the considerations relating to the nature and history 
of individuality that we may hope to find whatever of 
moral help that natural science can give us. The 
facts when clearly seen certainly lead us to a better 
understanding of what death means in the great 
order. 

As the purpose of this book is to set forth a nat- 
uralist's judgment of life and death, no deliberate 
consideration is given to matters of religion; so, too, 
many interesting questions of a purely philosophical 
kind as to the nature of individuality have not been 
touched upon. This metaphysical aspect of the 
problem has been amply discussed in Dr. Josiah 



viii THE INDIVIDUAL 

Koyce's work on the subject. It should thus be evi- 
dent that while the following pages are devoted to 
what seems to the writer a very important branch of 
the inquiry, that which concerns the tangible facts 
and the conclusions to be drawn therefrom, there is 
much else to be taken into account. 

It is evident that the modern views as to the 
nature and origin of life are in ever-increasing 
measure to direct the attention of men to what their 
presence in this world means. It is also clear that 
the naturalist's contribution, even though the value 
of it be questioned, has the right to be heard first 
in the debate. All explanations must take account 
of the facts with which he deals and the conclusions 

to which he is led. 

K S. S. 
Cambridge, July, 1900. 



INTRODUCTION 



The matter of death, has been the subject of 
endless consideration. From the time men began 
to think at all, the question of their passing has been 
uppermost in their thought. The certainty of it 
has affected every life; has shaped our societies 
and religions; indeed has made life what it is. 
So far, however, this matter of death has received 
little deliberate attention. The phenomena con- 
nected with it have been well described. The prob- 
lems of natural selection and of evolution have called 
attention to the results which come from the tempo- 
rary quality of the individual, but they have not led 
to any extended interest in the relation of the 
ephemeral nature of the individual to the other in- 
dividualities of the universe and to the method of 
its organization. 

In the following chapters I propose to approach 
the question of death from the point of view of its 
natural history, noting, in the first place, how the 
higher organic individuals are related to those of the 



X THE INDIVIDUAL 

lower inorganic realm of the universe. Then, taking 
up the organic series, I shall trace the progressive 
steps in the perfection of death by a determination 
as to the length of the individual life and its division 
into its several stages from the time when the 
individual is separated from the general body 
of the ancestral life to that when it returns to the 
common store of the earth. Upon the basis of the 
knowledge we may thus obtain, I shall endeavour to 
see what qualifications of the accepted view of the 
great accident we may make — how, in a word, we may 
hope to work toward a reconciliation of our death 
with the order in which we find ourselves placed. 

For obvious reasons the subject will not be treated 
in what is commonly termed the religious way — in 
the manner that goes behind the facts, or, perhaps 
we should say, above them; but in the matter-of-fact 
way — that which looks alone to the phenomenal for 
the explanation sought. The reader should under- 
stand that this limitation is by no means to be 
considered as a denial of the importance of the other 
method of approach, but that it is taken in order to 
avoid the mixture of religious and scientific methods 
which have been so generally profitless. No man 
should endeavour to journey on two paths at the 
same time, or on the same way in two vehicles. 
Should he do so he is sure to fail of his end. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

In the chapter on the effect of religion on the at- 
titude of men toward death, it should be understood 
that the statements which are there made are di- 
rected not against faith in the higher sense, not in 
the least against Christianity in its native form, but 
against the curious remnants of primitive religions 
which have crept into this most magnanimous of 
beliefs, turning its blessings into curses and its light 
into darkness, thereby laying a burden upon human 
life and hope in ways even more grievous than 
those of pagan times. 

In effect this book is a plea for an education as 
regards the place of the individual life in the whole 
of Nature which sha 1 ! be consistent with what we 
know of the universe. It is a plea for an under- 
standing of the relations of the person with the 
realm which is, in the fullest sense, his own; with 
his fellow-beings of all degrees which are his kins- 
men; with the past and the future of which he is an 
integral part. It is a protest against the idea, bred 
of many natural misconceptions, that a human being 
is something apart from its fellows: that it is born 
into the world and dies out of it into the loneliness 
of a supernatural realm. It is this sense of isolation 
which, more than all else, is the curse of life and the 
sting of death. 



CONTENTS 






CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction ix 

I. — The place of the individual in the universe 1 

II. — Organic individuals 17 

III. — The duration of the individual life . . 51 

IV. — The nature of individuality . . 70 

V. — The place of organic life in the universe . 98 

VI. — The growth of sympathy 106 

VII. — Expression of the individuality . . . 149 

r-VIII. — Appreciation of other individuality . . 164 

IX. — Fear and valour 188 

X. — The attitude of man toward death . . . . 203 

XI. — The relation of society to death . . . 238 

XII. — Relation of parent to child .... 251 

XIII. — The period of old age 262 

XIV. — The utilization of old age .... 278 

XV. — Immortality 286 

Index 347 

xiii 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



CHAPTER I 

THE PLACE OP THE INDIVIDUAL IN" THE UNTVEKSE 

It is an essential feature of man that he is an 
individual — a being separated from other units in a 
certain spacious way. We shall hereafter turn again 
to the question as to what this individuality means 
in the moral sense, and how it comes to be estab- 
lished by physical processes. Our purpose now is to 
see how far, if at all, this quality is peculiar to man, 
to his kindred, the sentient things or to the material 
realm. It is manifestly important to do this, for in 
that way alone can we take the first step toward 
measuring the value of this apparently peculiar iso- 
lation of the human being. To do this work we 
need to look abroad to see what we may as to the 
individualizing process in the several provinces of 
Nature. 

In beholding the universe man finds himself 
hindered by the fact that he looks upon it along 

1 



2 THE INDIVIDUAL 

what may be termed a certain plane of sight which, 
while it opens to him much of the higher, denies him 
any vision of its lower units; he sees practically un- 
limited suns, but he can not see their elements; he 
knows nothing that is perfectly sure of the ultimate 
constitution of matter, and by inference alone is 
enabled to divine some of its fundamental qualities. 
The leading fact which he may ascertain is that all 
things commonly termed material probably consist 
of atoms, indivisible, all with eminent individuality 
acting and reacting upon one another, each after the 
manner of its kind. It is commonly held that each 
of these atoms is a permanent unit, one that is not 
divided by any of the powers which are applied to 
•it, nor is it subject to any abiding changes. This 
evidence of the permanence of atoms rests upon a 
very limited body of experience. It has no other 
foundation than the tests of our laboratories and 
the evidence which the spectroscope affords, that in 
our sun and other like bodies in the visible universe 
the elements are arranged into the same groups as 
in our earth. As to the essence of an atom we know 
only the properties of each species in relation to 
those of others, and that each is the centre of actions 
which may extend very far beyond itself. Every one 
of the millions contained in the smallest object 
visible in the microscope is ever acting on the far- 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 3 

tliest body in the universe. We know, also, that 
each is the centre f roni which various sorts of control 
proceed by means of vibrations, passing now to the 
atom and again forth from it. There are also pro- 
cesses of control which can not as yet be clearly con- 
ceived as due to energy, as, for instance, those which 
give rise to the native qualities of these units. 

As for the ultimate constitution of the atom, 
whether it be essentially simple or complex, we have 
no knowledge whatsoever. Granting that it is indi- 
visible, it may still be of the order of indivisibility 
of a solar system: it may be made up of a complex 
of smaller bodies which owe their endurance to the 
most effective means of securing permanence in 
Nature, that which is won by ordered motions. So 
far as we can see there is no reason to suppose that 
the indivisibly small is attained when we come to the 
atomic stage of matter. There may, indeed, be sys- 
tem within system of individualities in indefinite 
extension into the infinite of the minute, quite as 
well as into the infinite of the great. The popular 
supposition of the atom as an ultimate in structure is 
hardly warranted by the facts we know about it; it 
is opposed to all we know of the constitution of the 
universe, of which it is a part. These statements are 
very speculative, but they have their use, for the 
reason that the notion of the atom as an essentially 



4 THE INDIVIDUAL 

indivisible and simple thing sets a limit to the in- 
finite on one side of the universe which serves to 
harm the true conception of its depths. Men cleave 
to these limitations: they afford seeming bounds to 
the natural, so that beyond them they may set the 
supernatural realm. Of old, they found a beginning 
and an end of the natural order. They imagined 
limits to space beyond which the lower control did 
not extend. Science has broken down these barriers 
to space, time, and law; but it has of itself instituted 
this new wall of the atom. 

All we really know about the atom is that in 
descending in the order of magnitude of the in- 
dividualities of the universe we finally come upon 
a very permanent kind of person, beyond whose bar- 
riers we have, as yet, found no means of breaking. 
The units of this estate have, like those of other 
estates, their qualities, perhaps their unchangeable 
characteristics. They differ from those of a higher 
order of complication, so far as we can see, only in 
the fact that they are unaffected by any influences 
we can bring to bear tending to break them into 
yet smaller units. 

Next in order of complication come the individ- 
ualities which are composed of two or more of these 
atoms, grouped in some order which may be that of 
motion or that of rest. These are the so-called mole- 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 5 

cules which are likewise quite beyond the limits of 
vision. When this molecular grouping of atoms 
occurs it is usually of those that belong to different 
species, with the result that a new individuality is 
created — one that, so far as we can see, has not the 
mere sum of the qualities of the elements, but is a 
third something which has been created from the 
union of the diversities. 

The individualities of the molecule are so like 
those of the atom as to suggest that they are but a 
higher combination of the same order as that which 
makes the atomic units. This view has some sup- 
port in the fact that, while the greater number of the 
molecular individualities are only broken up by heat 
or other agents of change, there are certain of them 
which are very firm as regards the bond, yielding 
only to the utmost skill the chemist can apply to 
bring about a parting of their lower units. When 
thus separated they seek quickly to fly back to their 
united state. The fewer the atoms in the system of 
the molecule, in general, the more limited the prop- 
erties of the aggregate and the more stable their 
union. r Ks the number of atomic individualities in 
the society increases, the greater the delicacy of its 
adjustment, until, in the more complicated of them, 
as we approach the protoplasmic aggregate, the num- 
ber of units is to be reckoned by the thousand, and 



6 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the construction is so delicate that it is easily 
destroyed. At this plane we pass from the inor- 
ganic to the organic, from the purely physical realm 
to that which is affected with another set of mo- 
tives. Although we are concerned mainly with this 
higher stage of life, we must here turn aside to con- 
sider some other features in the history of the purely 
physical individualities. 

The next kind of unit above the molecular which 
we have as yet discerned are the crystals — those com- 
binations of atoms, individually or in secondary asso- 
ciations, which take on definite mathematical forms, 
or rather approach such forms without attaining 
perfection in them. These are so general in their 
occurrence that while we have not seen the crystal- 
line shapes proper to many atomic species, or the 
most of their possible combinations, and many of 
them may never have existed, it is probable that 
every atomic or molecular aggregate has its normal 
crystal form — the order in which the units group 
themselves in the state of apparent rest which we 
associate with solidity. As to what may be the real 
condition of atoms or molecules in the crystalline 
repose, we as yet know nothing definite. The units 
may be in some kind of constant motion or at 
rest. 

From what we know of the conditions of crystal- 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 7 

lization, we conclude that if all the matter of the 
universe were made free to run its natural course 
from the original diffused state to that of a complete 
solid aggregation, each kind by itself, it would enter 
finally, as it lost heat, upon the stable condition of 
the crystal form, which, so far as we can see, is the 
most fixed of any state. We have to conceive con- 
stant activity of the atom and the molecule, but this 
orderly grouping of the units in the crystal suggests 
an enduring repose. 

As regards the degree of difference which may 
exist between atoms or molecules of the same species 
we know nothing that is certain. There are, how- 
ever, some facts which have led chemists reasonably 
to conjecture that molecules at least exhibit a meas- 
ure of individual peculiarity. When the student of 
the individualizing processes becomes well acquaint- 
ed with the conditions which make for the develop- 
ment of personal qualities in all the visible units of 
the universe, he will be disposed to question the idea 
that these of the lower order differ from one another 
in no other feature save that of position. To hold to 
this view is, in a way, to deny that these persons of 
the lower estate are effectively in the realm we know 
— a realm where each individual is the product of 
innumerable reciprocal, infinitely varied influences 
acting from without and from within, which, 



8 THE INDIVIDUAL 

save by a chance, expressed by the term " infinity 
to one/' could not give rise to absolutely identical 
forms. Even if we take this view, we are held 
by the facts to the supposition that while the array 
of actions which make for variety take effect on 
these lower persons, their action is not commonly 
sufficient to disturb the balance of dominant forces 
which give what we term the static condition. 
In a word, we may conceive these lower creatures 
of the inorganic to be like the higher individuals 
of the organic realm, sensitive to external influ- 
ences, yet so held by the dominating forces which 
shape them that they are limited in the variations 
they exhibit. 

When in the ascending order of complexity we 
attain to the crystals we find at once that the per- 
sonal quality of the individual is distinctly deter- 
mined. It is a well-known fact that specimens from 
particular localities have, in many instances, charac- 
teristics which are quite easily recognised. Those 
who closely observe these forms are able to note dif- 
ferences which serve to distinguish members of the 
same species even when they appear at first sight to 
be quite alike. Moreover, recent inquiries into the 
minute features of crystals have shown that, for 
all their seeming simplicity, they are really very 
complicated structures. Thus in many, if not 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 9 

all, of their species the process of etching brings 
out on the cleavage planes curious microscopic 
pits the forms of which are in general character- 
istic of the species, while the details of their 
arrangement appear to be in a measure peculiar to 
the individual. However it may be with the invisible 
atoms and molecules, it seems clear that the lowest 
individualities of the inorganic realm which we 
can see differ one from another in the manner, if not 
in the measure, that we are accustomed to note in 
organic personalities. 

Along with the chemical affinities and the related 
activities which are supposed to arise from the aggre- 
gations of matter, there acts another shape-giving 
influence, that of gravitation, which has much to do 
with the history of all the larger individualities of 
the universe. It, in fact, to a great extent controls 
their forms, from suns to men. As yet we know 
nothing concerning this mode of energy, if such we 
may term it, save that it appears to be proportional 
to the number of atoms there may be in any aggre- 
gate, and inversely proportional to the distance of 
one atom or mass from another. As all we know of 
atomic activity leads us to suppose that the qualities 
of these units depend on vibrations which are com- 
municated to other atoms or to the molecular aggre- 
gates, it is very puzzling to be compelled to face an- 



10 THE INDIVIDUAL 

other mode of action of these bodies, which behaves 
substantially like light, in that it can act at a dis- 
tance, but is supposed to operate in some essentially 
different way from all other activities. I there- 
fore venture to call attention to certain experiments 
by the physicist Bjerknes, which appear to indicate 
a possible solution of the mystery of gravitation. 
These are, in effect, that bodies of visible size when 
vibrating at the same musical pitch may attract one 
another. This seems to mean that a certain kind of 
waves may exist and be propagated through ether 
with the result that the bodies, thus moving at the 
same rate, are mutually attracted. It would be in- 
teresting to speculate on the ways in which this at- 
traction through the instrumentality of synchronous 
waves could be effected. We are here concerned 
only with the fact that the experiments show such a 
mode of attraction to be possible. It is only neces- 
sary for us to suppose that every atom has, among its 
many modes of vibration, one absolutely general pul- 
sation which exercises over all other bodies the effect 
given by likeness of musical pitch. We may indeed 
conceive that the gravitation impulse is due to the 
sum of the identical waves which exist among 
the vibrating units. If this view should be ap- 
proved, or indeed any other which would find our 
conception of gravitation in the vibration of atoms, 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE H 

we should be rid of the worse stumbling-block in 
our endeavour to found our theory of the universe 
on the supposition that it is throughout an expres- 
sion of energy. The importance of this point in our 
problem will become evident in the sequel. 

Eeturning to the observable work of gravitation, 
let us note the effect it has in shaping the larger indi- 
vidualities of Nature. First, let us attend to its 
effects on the original distribution of matter, a point 
which brings us at once in face of the natural his- 
tory of the stellar realm. As is well known, the 
belief of most astronomers is that the matter con- 
tained in the visible universe was once in a state of 
diffusion throughout and beyond all the realm of the 
fixed stars — the distant suns. In the process of the 
ages, this matter falling together to the several cen- 
tres of its consolidation, impelled thereto by gravity, 
has generated the hundred million or more of aggre- 
gates, the solar systems of which our own sun and its 
attendants is a relatively insignificant specimen. 
The precise manner in which this work has been ac- 
complished is by no means so clear as it was at one 
time supposed to be, for the inquiries of Professor 
George Darwin and Mr. S. J. See have shown that 
the tidal phenomena of the spheres, the tides in the 
primitive, molten masses, as well as those in the ordi- 
nary seas, tend to drive the spheres apart. It may 



12 THE INDIVIDUAL 

thus be that while gravitation works to consolidate 
matter in such bodies as suns, planets, and satellites, 
it then proceeds by a critical change in its action to 
send these spheres away from one another. This 
change in the results of the gravitation action is in- 
teresting, as it is one of many, very many, instances 
in which we find the apparently uniform processes of 
Nature, those which are indeed uniform in their 
steps of action, leading to sudden and complete 
changes of result. 

The important fact that is learned from the study 
of gravitation work is that it creates in the universe 
vast and complex individualities, the suns and their 
attendant minor bodies, each of which has its life 
history, its mode of birth, its processes leading to 
maturity, its period of rest after the forces which 
give rise to its activities have ceased to act. These 
individual bodies have each their own character- 
istics. They in a sense live their own lives, each 
different from the other; yet they do this by an 
endless interchange of actions, so that all that goes 
on in any one of them is affected by what takes place 
in every other. At first sight nothing seems more 
absolutely alone than an orb in space, parted by 
scores of millions of miles from its neighbours; yet 
it is a part of a system where each unit affects the 
other at every turn of its affairs. Every pulse of our 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 13 

hearts is due to the energy sent to the earth from the 
sun. The shapes of our lands are in large part de- 
termined by the ceaseless call that the moon makes 
on the seas. Though the isolation of any one solar 
system from another is more complete than that 
which exists in a planet of any one system, the same 
bond of interchanged action exists among them all. 
The spaces which part planet from planet, or from 
the sun, seem insignificant, and the connection be- 
tween them appears almost intimate when we come 
to consider the abysmal spaces that separate even the 
nearest suns one from the other. Still, even through 
these voids each draws the other to itself. The way 
in which each goes onward into the unknown upon 
the path the systems pursue is determined by every 
other. 

The history of the celestial systems show us that 
the largest individualities we can discern in the 
visible realm come forth from the ancient and sim- 
ple estate; that they have each won their personal 
isolation as have the lesser units of which they are 
composed. Yet each is absolutely bound up with the 
whole, is instituted in that whole without in any 
way parting from it. The apparent isolation is due 
in part to our complete ignorance as to what unites 
or wraps about the units or aggregates of matter. 
We know of this ether, or infinite space filler of the 



14 THE INDIVIDUAL 

visible universe, little more than that it seems to be 
in a way material, as it in certain ways transmits 
impulses, and in a way not material in any sense of 
matter known to us, in that it in no measurable way 
resists the movement of the celestial bodies. It re- 
mains absolutely enigmatical when judged by any 
of the standards we apply to those parts of the uni- 
verse which have the properties of matter. It has to 
be placed in a realm by itself into which we have as 
yet found no effective means of penetrating by ex- 
periment, and which is almost barred to the imagina- 
tion. 

We can not with satisfaction discuss the consid- 
eration of the ether as most physicists do, with mere 
negations, or with such suggestions as that it is " an 
absolutely elastic solid." We have to recognise that 
it is not pure space, but something actual — as actual 
indeed as any material thing, in that it has proper- 
ties; as, for instance, the capacity of transmitting 
impulses, and presumably many others which we fail 
to perceive. From the point of view of our present 
inquiry, the characteristic feature of the ether is 
that it appears to be undifferentiated. It may pos- 
sibly be the part of the cosmos which has not entered 
on the way toward individualization, which begins 
perhaps with the atom and proceeds to the great va- 
riety of units of the physical and the organic world. 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNIVERSE 15 

Speculating as to its nature in the light of what we 
know of the processes of the universe, we may ask 
whether ether be not a mode of existence less com- 
plicated than that of the atom, one from which, by 
the organization of its units, the atom may have 
been evolved, as the spheres, from the pre-exist- 
ing vapour? This, be it said, is mere speculation. 
The main point for us is that, in this ocean of 
the ethereal realm, which apparently remains as 
unindividualized as the infinite itself, has developed 
all the finite individualities, from atoms and suns 
to men. 

Our brief summary of the physical world has 
shown us, in mere outline, but sufficiently for our 
limited purpose, how the progress of organization in 
that realm is not alone from the undifferentiated to 
the differentiated — though that, too, is discernible — 
but essentially to individualities, and from the sim- 
pler of them to the more complex; and, further, that 
each of these individualities, from atom or celestial 
sphere, is none the less of the whole because it is of 
itself; it acts ever in its surroundings and receives 
action therefrom to the uttermost ends of the dis- 
cernible universe. It is hardly too much to say that 
on this individualizing process depends all the real 
work that is done within the universe. It is the 
reaction of one group of motives and capacities thus 



16 THE INDIVIDUAL 

localized in the persons of the material world upon 
another, which is the basis of the universal life. It 
is only as these personalities arise that energy 
can find other than a mere potential existence. As 
they become more and more varied in their quality, 
the reactions attain a higher interactive form. 



CHAPTER II 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 



The glance at the conditions of inorganic in- 
dividuals which is afforded by the preceding chap- 
ter may suffice to show that, in the apparently undif- 
ferentiated realm of the ether, there is a general pro- 
cess of constructing masses of varied order, atoms, 
molecules, crystals, and spheres, each endowed with 
its individuality, each related by interactions of di- 
verse value to the whole realm. We readily see that 
all these isolated units, except, perhaps, the atoms, 
have their process of development and a subsequent 
history, ending with some kind of extinction, which 
arises, not from any internal requirement, but from 
changes in the external relations of the structure — 
molecules are broken up, crystals pass into solution, 
the activity of the spheres ends with the loss of heat 
which inspired their life; there is everywhere that 
endless flux which the thoughtful of all times have 
seen to be the most evident feature in the universe. 

17 



18 THE INDIVIDUAL 

When we pass upward in the order of complexity 
from the so-called inorganic world to the organic, 
we at once perceive that we have passed a bound of 
much importance, though it is by no means easy to 
say where the limit lies or in what it consists. The 
ancients satisfied themselves with the simple concept 
that all matter was endowed with the spirit of life; 
that it was continually striving toward the state of 
animals or plants, though only a small part of it 
could ever attain to that station. They very gener- 
ally regarded the fossilized remains which resembled 
living forms, not as the moulds of creatures that had 
lived, but as abortive attempts of dead matter to take 
on the shapes of the living. With the first steps in 
the development of biologic science it came to be 
recognised that all the higher species of animals 
and plants came from eggs or seeds; and with 
the advance in that learning, it was in time seen 
that any coming of the living form from other than 
like preceding life certainly takes place but rarely, 
and in exceptional, if not unique, conditions. In 
all the skilful and patient research which has been 
devoted to the task of proving the possibility of 
spontaneous generation, there has as yet been no in- 
stance found in which, from matter which was not 
already living, any organic being has been brought 
forth. The value of the evidence as to the separa- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 19 

tion of the living from the not-living, which became 
evident a century ago, has been increased by recent 
studies, with the result that naturalists have of late 
regarded the barrier between the two states as one 
of great permanence — one seldom passed, and then 
only under very peculiar conditions, the nature of 
which is not yet discovered." * 

Although the difference between the inorganic 
and the organic is made tolerably plain by the fact 
that the living beings appear, in all the observed in- 

* In the present state of our knowledge or, as we had better 
say, ignorance of the conditions in which the passage from the 
inorganic to the organic was effected, any apparently reason- 
able conjecture is warranted. I therefore venture the follow- 
ing suggestions : It is evident that the primal organism must 
have been formed in water, for there alone could such an asso- 
ciation of materials as compose a single organic body have 
occurred or been perpetuated. It is very difficult to conceive 
how, in a primitive, lifeless sea or in lakes and rivers destitute 
of such organic matter, any water could have been found con- 
taining mineral matter in a sufficiently concentrated state to 
admit of the chemical processes necessary to the beginning of 
an organic structure. The only position where we can well 
conceive such a state of affairs to exist is in the cooling waters 
of a hot spring coming perhaps from lavas, or in a brook 
formed therefrom, where the fluid might be saturated with the 
substances derived from the rocks which, owing to the cooling, 
would tend to be deposited. This hypothesis, be it understood, 
by no means explains the way in which these dissolved mate- 
rials took on their organic form; it only provides for the 
gathering together of the elements necessary for the organiza- 
tion ; in a word, it helps us only a little way toward the critical 
point where the essentially lifeless becomes truly alive. 
3 



20 THE INDIVIDUAL 

stances, to be derived from the antecedent organic 
forms, it is still very difficult to see in what this dif- 
ference consists. For awhile some appeasement of 
curiosity in this matter was found by supposing that 
there was a vital principle which animated the indi- 
viduals of the higher realm that did not operate in 
the lower; but this explanation is merely verbal; it 
has no true explanatory value, for it has no real 
meaning. In one form and another definitions have 
been presented, each having temporary acceptance, 
but in the end failing for lack of proof or because it 
was positively disproved. As the definition of the 
difference between the individuals of the lower and 
the higher estate, between those of the atomic, molec- 
ular, crystalline, or spherical realms and that to 
which we ourselves belong, is of much importance to 
our inquiry, it is well to note some of these efforts, 
and in the end to essay one of our own. 

The old hypothesis of a vital principle, itself a 
modification of the ancient idea of a " plastic vir- 
tue " or a " fatty matter " in the earth that tended to 
breed life, gave way to the idea that there were cer- 
tain natural forces which operated to create life and 
to keep the beings in their estate. So, for a time on, 
we find such definitions as that of the celebrated 
anatomist Bichat, to the effect in varied phrase that 
life in the congeries of all those forces which resist 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 21 

death. In the advance of the criticisms of explana- 
tions which demarks modern science from ancient 
learning, with the introduction of the mathematical 
spirit which has given so much to natural inquiry, all 
these mere verbal explanations have been neglected, 
and naturalists have turned to seek in the processes 
of organic species for a firmer ground on which to 
rest their definitions. It was suggested that the 
phenomena of reproduction were peculiar to the liv- 
ing forms, but it was soon found that in some un- 
known way the molecule and the crystal alike tend to 
increase their kind. Moreover, in its simplest form 
reproduction appears to be no more than the spon- 
taneous division of the parent body, which may or 
may not take place. It was then suggested that the 
capacity of the living creature to feed — i. e., to take 
in previously existing molecular compounds which 
are broken up and are rebuilt into the body — was a 
sound basis for a discrimination; but this, too, 
failed, for the reason that a similar action was noted 
in crystals, and may exist even in the molecular 
aggregates. There can be no question that all the 
processes of reproduction and nutrition are very 
much more extensively turned to account in the or- 
ganic than in the inorganic world, and that this dif- 
ference in degree is a matter of the greatest impor- 
tance. It is clear, however, that on them alone we 



22 THE INDIVIDUAL 

can not well found our definition of the distinction 
between the two realms. It is indeed to be sought 
further and in something more fundamental. 

In noting the individualities of the lower, purely 
physical realm, we remarked the fact that the asso- 
ciations of the atoms, the molecule and the crystal 
sphere are each after the manner of its kind, essen- 
tially invariable except so far as they may be af- 
fected by forces from without. "We have now to ob- 
serve that this fixity appears to be absolute; the atoms 
in the stars are, as their light shows, the same in 
character as those found on the earth. The materials 
of the meteorites which come we know not whence, 
but certainly from other spheres than our own, show 
us the same minerals in the same forms as those 
belonging in the earth. The crystals of the oldest 
rocks in no important regards differ from those of to- 
day. In other words, these lower individuals, though 
they receive, transmit, and change the forms of en- 
ergy, do their work always in substantially the same 
way. They in nowise obtain anything in their inter- 
course with their surroundings which goes to qualify 
the successors of their species. It is quite otherwise 
with the organic form; while, like its lower kinsmen, 
it receives, converts, and sends on energy, it is inter- 
nally so affected by its surroundings that it under- 
goes changes, and, what is more important, these 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 23 

changes lead to the development of a measure of in- 
dividuality in the units in a manner unknown to 
the lower realm. But the eminently important 
feature is that by some way or ways these changes are 
accumulated in the succession of the generations so 
that the species are in process of continual altera- 
tion. They are, as we observe, educated by their 
environment. 

I have spoken of this difference between the in- 
educable lower realm of individuals and the higher 
organic educable forms as infinite. The word is not 
of too wide meaning to denote the utter change in 
the conditions of existence which the capacity to 
profit by the influences of environment brings about. 
The mechanical structures of the lower realm act in 
a uniform manner. Given a certain influence from 
without and the reaction is always the same wherever 
and at whatever time it occurs. In these higher in- 
dividualities which we term " living " the structure 
has a personal quality which causes it to vary its ac- 
tion indefinitely; to change its form; to try endless 
adaptations to its conditions, and to alter its shape 
from generation to generation so as to secure the 
best possible adjustment to the surroundings. We 
thus see that it is the capacity of organic form to 
gather and store experience which demarks it from 
the inorganic. It should need no argument to show 



24: THE INDIVIDUAL 

that this peculiarity puts the structure in an abso- 
lutely different order from that in which the lower 
forms lie. 

The educable quality of the lowest organic indi- 
viduality opens before it a kind of opportunity un- 
known in the simple states of aggregated matter; 
the atom, the molecule, the crystal, and the sphere 
can not go beyond the state set for them by their 
primal structure: the organic form can infinitely 
advance. But to make this advance certain condi- 
tions of existence which did not occur in the lower 
stages of being have to be instituted; to these 
changes we will now turn our attention. First, let us 
note that organic advance depends upon a process of 
trial between competitors for the chance to live. 
The field for the development of this life must in all 
cases be confined to the surface of some planetary 
sphere, and so is of limited extent. The way in 
which this essay is accomplished is in a manner sim- 
ple and inevitable. Each person of a given species 
has its trial; if it is successful it survives and hands 
its life on to its progeny, who are likely to inherit the 
features which gave success to the ancestor. The 
parent form having done that which is the highest 
part an individual can perform must be withdrawn 
from the field to make room for its successors. 

In this way we have the principle of death estab- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 25 

lished as an inevitable corollary to that of advance- 
ment. It is indeed conceivable that an organic 
realm might be so organized that individuals, begin- 
ning in the lowest order, should survive indefinitely, 
and by progressive makings-over, somewhat after the 
manner of the metamorphosis of insects, keep ad- 
vancing until they attained the highest estate. But 
in the world we know it is evident that the system 
of the succession of generations is an absolute 
necessity. This is shown by the fact that in all the 
great series of animals and plants we find that at the 
beginning the lower forms have no fixed period of 
life. Some of the lowest protozoa indeed, which 
seem to be no more than mere protoplasmic aggre- 
gates, may in a sense survive indefinitely; they di- 
vide from time to time, yet some portion of the 
structure of the aboriginal parent may inhere in the 
forms of those of to-day. As we rise in the steps 
of the series the term of life and the generational 
succession become more and more definite until in 
all the higher species both of animals and plants it is 
almost as certainly determined as it is in man. 

It is a very instructive fact that in all the endless 
experiments which animals and plants have made 
to better the adjustments of the conditions of their 
lives to their environment, we find none whatever 
which look to the indefinite prolongation of the 



26 THE INDIVIDUAL 

existence of the individual. Although the indi- 
vidual is the absolutely important thing — although 
it contains within itself all the profit that has 
been won in all the stages of its ancestry, it is ever 
and promptly sacrificed to the interests of the 
life to come. As if it were discerned that the 
accidents of this world were not of themselves 
sufficient to insure its certain disappearance when 
its full reproduction work was done, each of these 
creatures normally is provided with internal adjust- 
ments which surely bring it to an end. 

It is difficult to see how this determination as to 
the duration of life has been established. On the 
basis of the survival of the fittest, it might be ex- 
pected that there would be an advantage arising 
from the perpetuation to the utmost of the approved 
strong rather than from their replacement by others 
of a host whence the strong would again have to be 
selected by a struggle. On the other hand, the ex- 
treme selectionist would say that a species which had 
developed the plan of having quick succeeding gen- 
erations would have a distinct advantage in the con- 
test for existence with species hampered with the 
remains of the less advanced predecessors. It is 
hard to see how this selection with the long arm 
could have so fixed this method of death in the order 
in which we find it throughout the organic world. 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 27 

It is perhaps more natural to assume that the need 
of death is established by influences which lie out- 
side of the selection field. "We must beware of the 
state of mind of some naturalists — a really un- 
scientific state — which leads them to claim that be- 
cause natural selection is true, there can be no other 
like truth in the world of life. We must remember 
that in animals and plants, quite as much as in the 
lower mechanical realm, there are establishments of 
order which are primitive, and which control the 
conditions of individuals as they control those of 
crystals or spheres. 

Although we shall more than once have to re- 
turn to this matter of the establishment of death in 
the organic world, it is well to look now to certain 
of its aspects. It is to be noted that the individuali- 
ties of the lower inorganic realm, above the plane of 
the atom, though they may perish do so by purely 
external acts; they do not have any trace of a limit 
to their normal endurance. It is only when the 
principle of the advance by successions of genera- 
tions is established that we have death instituted as a 
feature in the system. It is thus an innovation — one 
of very great moment, which has qualified organic 
life in an absolute manner. It has given to the indi- 
vidual a temporary character; merging its being into 
the life of its kind; making it but a step in the 



28 THE INDIVIDUAL 

series to which it belongs. It is this life of the 
series, developed by the experience of the organic 
individuals that form it, that is the eminent charac- 
teristic of the organic realm. 

The institution of the system of the generations 
in organic forms brings with it the serious difficulty 
that the newcomers in the field are necessarily weak 
and dependent on their ancestors for all that starts 
them on their way. There is in all cases a gulf 
between the generations which has in a way to be 
bridged. To the accomplishment of this task goes 
the greater part of the contrivances, physical and 
intellectual together, that the organic world ex- 
hibits. The work is marked on every hand by in- 
numerable devices ranging from the flowers of 
plants to the organization of human society. The 
steps which are taken should be considered in a 
general way by the inquirer into the true meaning 
of death, for they show how life, from its begin- 
nings, has been dealing with the problem. 

In the lowliest organisms, such as the Amoeba, 
the process of reproduction appears to be of the sim- 
plest possible kind. The creature spontaneously 
divides, each of the separated parts taking some- 
thing like an even share of the original jellylike 
mass. As there are no specialized organs, every 
part is able to exercise all of the very simple func- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 29 

tions of the creature. This primitive method of 
increase serves its purpose well. When the body 
becomes more complicated, when it has organs, 
the method of simple division is found to be less 
convenient, so there is a part of the body which 
is set aside as the field from which the new beings 
are to be produced by what now becomes a bud- 
ding process. These buds may go forth as de- 
tached individuals, as in the jellyfishes and sea 
anemones, or they may remain connected with the 
parent stock, as in the case of the ordinary corals, 
the sponges, or the buds of the common plants. Al- 
though this plan of reproducing by means of off- 
shoots is gradually displaced by the more complicated 
sexual method, it remains in use throughout the 
greater part of the vegetable kingdom, and extends 
among animals to species of tolerably high grade. 

While the method of reproduction by the bud- 
ding process appears to have served the needs of the 
lowliest organic forms, it does not fit the require- 
ments of the higher life. When retained in the 
series above the lowest it is most commonly used 
only to build up a colony of individuals such as we 
find in the plants, composed of many buds, or a com- 
munity such as the compound corals present. The 
tendency to bud appears to hold its place in the ani- 
mal body long after it has ceased to be in any distinct 



30 THE INDIVIDUAL 

way useful, reappearing here and there as reminis- 
cences of the remote past, such as we are accustomed 
to find in the more highly organized forms which 
seem never entirely to forget the organic steps by 
which they found their way upward. Traces of the 
method of reproduction by budding possibly exist 
even in the mammalian series to which man belongs. 
The passage from the original method of repro- 
duction by budding, or the subdivision of the parent 
body into two or more parts, to that of the seed or 
egg, is not clearly made out. There is no doubt that 
the sexual method consists essentially in a process 
by which two individuals combine each a share of 
its own body with that of the other, so that the 
germ is the offspring of two persons in place of one. 
The selectionist's explanation of the method, in 
effect, that it gives the young a chance to inherit 
a larger range of motives and so in a way to help in 
the advancement of the species, appears to be sound. 
We may, indeed, account for the establishment, if not 
the origination, of the method on the ground of its 
utility. Even in the lowest forms, where we can ob- 
serve the primitive process of division, it is a nota- 
ble fact that it is often preceded by the coalescence 
of two individuals which may serve to give the pe- 
culiar advantage of the double ancestry. Thus for 
a while the limits between the two methods of re- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 31 

production remain obscure; but, measured in terms 
of advancement or of geologic ages, the superiority 
of what we may term the double method was quickly 
and firmly established, in time generally to dis- 
place the earlier and more simple plan. How mo- 
mentous this establishment has been we shall note 
in the sequel. 

The bridging of the interval between the genera- 
tions was not completed by the institution of a well- 
contrived method of reproduction; in fact, the task 
was but begun by that contrivance. So long as the 
organic forms were very simple, so that any part of 
the body could transmit all the motives of the spe- 
cies, the young having only to enlarge its size in 
order to attain maturity, the earlier simple method 
served the needs. But, with the ascent in the scale 
of living, with the institution of complicated bodies 
and the creation of the system of germs, necessarily 
of small size, there came new and serious difficulties. 
In the first stages of the sexual method we observe 
that the egg or seed is sent forth from the parent 
with little more in the way of help from the crea- 
ture that gave it birth than is afforded by the store 
of impulses which serve to guide it in development. 
So far as the provision of food or protection is con- 
cerned it must shift for itself, with the result that 
for tens of thousands born scarcely one attains to 



32 THE INDIVIDUAL 

maturity. With the spores and germs of the lower 
orders of animals and plants it may be assumed 
that not one in a hundred thousand arrives at the 
adult state. Therefore, we find that about as soon 
as the spores and germs are contrived there begins 
a series of experiments in the way of providing food 
along with them so that the new life may be helped 
a certain distance on its way by appropriating to its 
use nutriment gathered and stored by the parent. 

The development of the egg and seed from their 
primitive simplicities to their most perfect estates 
exhibits a vast series of inventions. Considering 
only those which relate to the nutrition of the em- 
bryo, we remark that the store of food which is thus 
withdrawn from the body of the parent becomes, in 
the higher development of the process, a great tax 
on the vitality of the mother. Many of our smaller 
birds lay in a single season eggs which much out- 
weigh their bodies. In cases, it is said, a single egg 
weighs as much as one tenth of the mother-frame. 
Among the higher plants the provision of food 
stored with the seed is often of like value, the mass 
of nutritive matter often outweighing all the other 
parts of the plant. How good the material thus 
provided is may be judged by the fact that our civ- 
ilization rests upon the provision, for it is supported 
by the grain-bearing plants. 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 33 

Along with the development of the nutritive 
store of egg and seed, material provisions designed 
to carry the germ across the gulf that parts genera- 
tion from generation, goes a host of other evidences 
of intellectual and automatic cares which look to 
the fitting distribution and placement of the young, 
such as may secure them the best chance in life. 
In the plants this is shown by contrivances which 
secure the distribution of the seed by means of 
wings that catch the wind; by springs which, as in 
the Impatiens or touch-me-not, discharge the tiny 
bits so that they may fall far from the parent stock. 
Again, in the fruit-bearing plants, the seed is sur- 
rounded by a tempting pulp so arranged that, when 
eaten by birds or mammals, the seed will be taken 
with it into their stomachs, to be voided with their 
dung. This is a most successful contrivance, and 
the adjustments to make it effective are admirably 
devised. The seeds of most fruits are hard and 
slippery, as, for instance, those of an apple. They 
are thus likely to escape the crushing action of the 
teeth. They are also so organized that the high tem- 
perature to which they are subjected in the alimen- 
tary canal is advantageous to their development, as 
is shown by the fact, well known to gardeners, that 
such seeds are more easily germinated if they are 
soaked for about twenty-four hours in water, at a 



34 THE INDIVIDUAL 

temperature of about one hundred degrees Fahren- 
heit. This gives them the preliminary treatment to 
which they have been adapted. When such seed 
come to the earth it is along with a store of fertiliz- 
ing material which serves to hasten the early and 
more perilous stages of their development. 

Yet further marks of the care of plants for their 
young are seen in the contrivances to increase the 
temporary adhesion of the seed to the hair of ani- 
mals. These, from a mechanical point of view, are 
wonderfully well designed, the general shape of the 
structure being so made that it clings firmly. The 
booklets are peculiarly adapted to the quality of hair 
or wool, and the normal height of the seed vessels 
above the ground is so arranged that they may come 
in contact with the bodies of the creatures to which 
they look for transportation. The finish of the 
contrivance is carried even to the fine point of 
arranging the hooklets so that they may not hold on 
too long, for at a certain stage of their drying the 
clinging points become brittle so that they break at 
a touch, allowing the seed to fall to the ground. 

Admirable as are the devices by which the germs 
of plants obtain a distribution favourable to their 
well being, they are of small account as compared 
with those for like ends we see in the animal king- 
dom. In that higher field we find not only the me- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 35 

chanical adjustments, such as those we have noted 
among the plants, but a host of others that are the 
result of the individual intelligence belonging to ani- 
mals alone. Although the very first signs of mental 
activity appear to be directed to the immediately per- 
sonal ends of obtaining food and avoiding danger, 
the highest manifestations of intellectual work be- 
low the level of men are to be found in the contriv- 
ances designed to better the chances of the young. 
These are so numerous that I shall not try even to 
indicate their range or scope. I shall note, indeed, 
but one which happens to be so far indicative as to 
be of value not only here but at other stages of our 
inquiry. This is what may be observed in the nest- 
ing habits of the ordinary mud wasp, a widely dif- 
fused species, one that is familiar to all observant 
persons. This creature belongs to a group which, 
as in all advanced forms, is noteworthy for the care 
they take in making provision for their young. 
That of which we have to tell the story is, in the 
measure of its contrivance, scarcely beyond many 
others of its kindred. 

The arrangements which the mud wasp makes 
for the care of its offspring are as follows: At the 
time for nesting the female proceeds to search out 
a suitable place for constructing her egg cases. In 

this choice of a situation she shows a singularly 

4 



36 THE INDIVIDUAL 

effective insight into the accidents of the weather. 
She selects places, such as those in the lintels and 
jjambs of a window, where the nests will be tolerably 
sheltered from the washing action of the rain, yet 
she appears to discern that they should not be per- 
fectly shelterd from it. When she has found a fit 
site she searches for clayey mud, such as will be- 
come firm when dried. The material is gathered 
with rare skill, the quality varying but little wher- 
ever we find it used. With this clay she proceeds 
to construct a small cylindrical case a few millime- 
tres wide and about three centimetres long; rough 
on the outside but smooth within. When this 
task is accomplished she goes forth to seek spiders 
of small size, limiting the choice to a few species, 
oftenest only one kind is taken; these she stings 
with care so that they may not be killed but only 
benumbed, in which state they may lie for weeks. 
These spiders she packs into the chamber until it is 
well filled. Then on these spiders she lays an egg 
and finally seals up the mouth of the chamber with 
a thin covering of clay. This process is usually 
repeated until several, rarely more than half a dozen, 
of these cases are formed, one beside the other. 
There being a certain saving thus effected in the 
mud, which is precious because of the difficulty of 
transporting it, she then, as if unwilling to venture 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 37 

all her eggs in one basket, seeks another site for 
other like constructions. 

Shortly after the egg is laid beside the numbed 
spiders, the young grub comes forth and proceeds 
to feed on them. When, in the course of a few 
weeks, it has eaten the last of the store, it has grown 
to the limits of the lodging place. It then enters 
on the chrysalis state, undergoes in time its meta- 
morphosis to the perfect insect. If it be a female it 
then proceeds to repeat those marvels which it has 
never seen done, and which it can not possibly be 
taught to do by its predecessors, for they are all 
dead. We have here two groups of facts; on the 
one hand, the delicately adjusted processes by which 
this task is accomplished, all involving what is, in 
effect, a singular anticipation of the career of the 
unborn young, transformations which the mother 
can not possibly have seen; and the other, the insti- 
tution and transmission from generation to genera- 
tion of the impulses or desires which lead to the ac- 
tions just recounted. 

All through the animal kingdom, in fact in al- 
most every species, we note actions, though they 
may be less picturesque than those exhibited by the 
mud wasp, yet are, in their essence, equally marvel- 
lous and serve quite as well to show the great inten- 
sity with which the actions of animals are directed 



38 THE INDIVIDUAL 

to the end of handing on to the generation to come 
the largest possible share of help that the passing 
members of the species can afford. We see, even in 
the lower stages of life, that this care for the un- 
born, such as is, or at least should be, the main 
theme of our human society, is the basis of all the 
higher endeavours of the creatures. We see that it 
goes further than any other motive in lifting their 
intelligence to a high order of development; for, 
however we may take the work of the mud wasp, it 
remains as the work of mind; doubtless uncon- 
scious, automatic in a sense, yet for all that the 
work of one mode of mind. We see, moreover, in 
these deeds of two million or more species of in- 
sects and a host of birds and higher animals, one 
clear object, which is that their successors may pass 
over the gulf between the generations not only un- 
harmed, but helped in every possible way. They do 
not know that what they do is an offering on the 
altars of self-sacrifice — they do it because it is their 
nature thus to serve. 

The lower series of organisms, as before noted, 
effect their reproduction at first by a simple method 
of dividing the body; later on the method of the 
egg or seed, more or less combined with some sur- 
vival of the primitive plan of budding. In the in- 
sects where the methods of propagation are most 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 39 

elaborately worked out, the care of the offspring at 
many points attains even more elaboration than is 
exhibited in the solitary example above described. 
Though as yet but a small part of the facts is known 
it would be an easy matter to fill the pages of a 
dozen volumes with the accounts of the contrivances 
which have been resorted to by the animals whose 
young come forth into the world from eggs. They 
all tell the same story of progeny necessarily turned 
out into the sea or air insufficiently developed 
properly to shift for themselves, needing all the care, 
at best but little, that the passing generation can con- 
tribute to their welfare. The difficulty of the situa- 
tion may be judged by the fact that these oviparous 
creatures send into the world probably not less than 
an average of a thousand young for one that, in the 
chances of life, attains maturity. 

All along the various series of animals that have 
a high order of development we find contrivances of 
exceeding variety which have for their purpose some- 
thing like the temporary adoption of the young into 
the body of the parent. With many spiders these 
young cling to the mother. In certain molluscs 
wonderfully elaborate egg cases are constructed for 
them wherever they may dwell in their period of 
first weakness. In some of the unios, or fresh-water 
clams, there is a sac adjoining the gills where they 



40 THE INDIVIDUAL 

may find temporary shelter. In the pipefish there 
is a pocket in which the young lodge. In the Su- 
rinam toad the eggs are placed on the back of the 
male when they enter the skin, forming pustular 
structures wherein the embryo perhaps obtains 
some nutriment from the parent. But none of 
these efforts to afford more than the ordinary pro- 
tection to the egg are successful until the method 
is devised of having the mother provided with 
milk-giving glands so arranged that the infant 
can obtain the fluid. By this device, which is 
the consummate invention of the class to which 
we ourselves belong, the offspring is made free to 
what is, in effect, the mother's blood for a period 
of from a few weeks to two years or more after 
extrusion from her body. This system has other 
than a mere physical value, for it keeps the infant 
in contact with the mother — often with both par- 
ents — for a much longer time than otherwise would 
be the case, and so aids in the establishment of the 
foundations in which the family rests. 

At a later stage in the advance, along with the 
development of the function of milk-giving goes 
the permanent institution of the method whereby 
the egg is hatched within the body of the mother 
and the young brought forth not only alive, but 
much advanced in their development. Approaches 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 41 

to this system, tentative but never really successful 
efforts to attain the end, are to be noted among vari- 
ous of the fishes and in a way among the inverte- 
brates. Thus, in certain species of sharks and in 
the viviparous bony fishes, the eggs are hatched 
within the parent's body and the young come forth 
with a size which they could not have attained from 
the resources of the egg alone; they have clearly, 
by some means or other, obtained nutriment from 
the mother, probably from, the passage to them of 
the fluids of her blood, by the process of osmosis. 
But the earlier essays were only the forerunners of 
the great and successful experiment of the mammals 
in the process of gestation, the development of the 
placenta, an invention which, perhaps more than 
all the others that have been made in a physical 
way, effectively bridges the ancient gulf between the 
generations, at least so far as the physical machin- 
ery of the body is concerned. In its perfected form 
the union before birth is so complete that the young 
is an integral part of the body of the mother. All of 
her constructive powers are at the command of the 
new life, all of her strength which may be needed 
is automatically directed to the work of nurture. 

None other of the many great series of organic 
events show us anything like the array of physical 
contrivances and intellectual inventions all directed 



42 THE INDIVIDUAL 

to one impersonal end as this admirable succession 
of deeds relating to the care of offspring. Even 
when we explain this work by natural law we in no- 
wise lessen its majesty or that of the system which 
bade it take the shape we find. 

As the naturalist looks back over the long per- 
spective of life, he sees, indistinctly it is true, but 
clearly enough for the immediate need, how the 
development of the organic individual introduced 
into the universe a new kind of unit, one differing 
from all the lower units previously existing in that 
it was educable, it could garner experience and 
profit thereby. He sees that this provision for an 
indefinite advance requires the development of the 
generational order, as is shown by the fact that the 
method is instituted and affirmed in all the groups 
of animals and plants, and that in the process of 
advance it is made more definite and unalterable. 
He sees, furthermore, that there comes out of this 
plan of education a host of difficulties and dangers 
arising from the isolation of the successive individ- 
ual lives and the apparent impossibility of bridging 
the chasm between them. When the work is beheld 
as accomplished the whole seems so well united, the 
parts are so linked into a whole that the observer is 
apt to accept it and pass on without due attention to 
what has been really effected. It is best that he 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 43 

should attend to certain features of this series of 
events which may help him to an understanding 
of the problems of life and death. 

Let us first note the apparent difficulty, that 
there is no profit to the individual in its own death; 
yet we see that the life of its kind, which is its own 
being together with that of its fellows, proceeds as 
rapidly as possible to establish a term for its endur- 
ance which is as brief as is consistent with the at- 
tainment of maturity and the care of the possible 
offspring. If a day will serve, then it is but a day. 
If it demands more time, then so much and no 
more, the point being that the sacrifice in the inter- 
ests of those of the kind that are to come must be 
as complete as is required. The claim of the per- 
son itself is to count for nothing. Considering 
again that the actual life is that of the individual, 
this devotion of its interests to an ultimate purpose is 
most trustworthy. We must seek an explanation of it. 

As before stated, the extreme selectionist would 
account for the enforced brevity of the life of the 
individual by the doctrine of vital economy; i. e., 
by the supposition that it was advantageous to a 
variety or a species in pressing forward to have the 
successive generations produced as rapidly as pos- 
sible, each with its active host unencumbered with 
the debris of ancestral forms presumably less ad- 



44 THE INDIVIDUAL 

vanced and most likely unfitted by the hard usage 
of time to contribute a fit return for their sub- 
sistence drawn from a general store. At first sight, 
this view has a certain appearance of probability; it 
is, indeed, one of the unhappy qualities of all the 
propositions of the selective hypothesis that they 
have an appearance of certainty which leads the 
novice to feel that they hardly need verification. 

To all those who appreciate the real value of the 
Darwinian method of approaching organic prob- 
lems this false certainty which comes with the state- 
ment of his views is a matter of regret, for the rea- 
son that it endangers their eventual place in the 
science they are so well fitted to help. The reason 
for this peculiar position of the hypothesis is to be 
found in the singularly question-begging quality of 
the phrases which are necessarily employed in the 
statement of the proposition. The word " selec- 
tion " implies an absolute choice, and the term 
" natural " apparently adds a quality of certainty to 
the action. We have to remember that the influ- 
ences which make for or against the life of individ- 
uals and species are very numerous and complicated 
in their interactions. Occasionally the life of a 
species is terminated in some sudden and catastro- 
phic manner. But commonly it passes slowly and 
as a consequence of a great array of actions. Fur- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 45 

ther, we have to remember that in no immediate 
sense can there be any struggle for existence or sur- 
vival of the fittest between two or more species; all 
such relations are between individuals. That these 
individuals happen to group themselves in an order 
of classification in our minds, in no important way- 
affects the processes of their life and death. The 
interaction is between units. With these points 
in mind we will examine into the question of 
whether the process of the survival of the fittest 
qan well account for the establishment of a definite 
longevity in all the various series of animals and 
plants which, to the number of some thousand mil- 
lion species, now tenant or have tenanted the 
earth. The first point to be noted is that in all the 
individualities below the organic realm there is no 
trace of a rule that the unit shall at a certain time 
disappear; dissolution is common enough in all forms 
above the plane of the atom, but the change comes, 
so far as we can see, always from external actions, 
and not from any internal determination. So far 
as the general order of events in the visible universe 
goes, it shows that death, systematically instituted, 
has no place there. 

We do not know what the first forms of organic 
life were: they could hardly have been much more 
uncomplicated in aspect than the lowest of the pro- 



46 THE INDIVIDUAL 

tozoa of to-day, which appear to be in structure 
mere bits of slightly animated jelly. They may 
reasonably be taken as types of life in its simpler 
conditions. As yet there is no sufficient informa- 
tion as to the longevity of creatures such as the 
Amoeba and the kindred lower species. All that we 
know of them, however, indicates that there is no 
fixed period of death; that they continue the process 
of growth and division until some external action 
brings the end. In fact, among all the lowest mem- 
bers of the several great series of invertebrates, the 
definition of the term of the individual existence is 
not exactly made. There is a period of youth fol- 
lowed by that of maturity which shades into age on 
the way to death. "We can, in a word, see that very 
gradually, yet irresistibly, the plan of having the 
persons of the species pass away is worked out. So 
far as we can discern, the result is in all the series 
very slowly attained. Now, the probability of any 
accidental characteristic being affirmed by natural 
selection in large measure depends on the distinct- 
ness and effectiveness of the offering. We have to 
recognise that the survival of an individual, and 
through it of the species to which it belongs, de- 
pends, not upon any one feature, but upon a vast 
array of structures, functions, and habits and their 
interactions with a complementary array of condi- 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 47 

tions presented by the environment. In this battle 
for life and success, in which there is a host of in- 
teracting needs, there may be some one of them so 
strong and swiftly acting that to it alone the deci- 
sion may be immediately due; but to have any such 
efficiency the particular feature must be of great 
value in the contest. 

Let us suppose that of two groups or species of 
individuals in the lower parts of the organic series 
contending for the possession of the same field of 
subsistence, one, which we will term " A" had de- 
veloped a somewhat more definite longevity than 
the other, which we will designate as " B." We are 
to regard these differences as very slight as com- 
pared with many others which may exist, for the 
reason that, save in the higher forms, they are evi- 
dently ill denned. Let us suppose also that in each 
of these groups the other differences of value in the 
equation which determines life or death number, 
say, fifty (the probabilities are that they far exceed 
that estimate); let us suppose, as we well may, that 
many of these features, such as those which relate 
to obtaining food or mates, or those which con- 
tribute to safety, are one and all of more immediate 
effect upon the chance of individual survival than 
the difference in the longevity can have on the 
chance of the species as a whole. If we grasp this 



48 THE INDIVIDUAL 

complicated suggestion we see that the probability 
of A by selection displacing B appears to be ex- 
ceedingly small. There are other considerations 
which may be urged by the extreme selectionists, 
but they all appear to fall before such criticism as 
that made above, which rests on the considerations 
that the determination of longevity proceeds very 
slowly; that it is not only of no advantage to the 
individual, but it is of maximum disadvantage to it; 
and that as between competing species the slight 
variations — slight alike in amount and in value — 
would probably be of no account in the presence of 
the great host of telling characters on which selec- 
tion would naturally be determined. 

It appearing to be more than doubtful whether 
the principle of a definite life period can be due to 
external selection, the question arises whether any 
internal process of that nature could have brought 
about the result. Although biologists have not 
been disposed to consider the interior of an in- 
dividual as affording a field for selective work, there 
can be no doubt that determinations, essentially 
selective in their action, go on within the bodies of 
animals and plants, especially in those of high 
grade. In highly organized forms — i. e., those with 
many organs more or less independent, parts centred 
in one individuality — these parts apparently may 



ORGANIC INDIVIDUALS 49 

enter into a certain competition one with another 
for the strength of the body, with the frequent re- 
sult that some feature is so developed that it be- 
comes a source of weakness to the life of the whole. 
This motive of excessive growth probably is the 
source of death to some species, for it is a note- 
worthy fact that in tracing the successions of ancient 
forms whose record is written in the rocks, that the 
most aberrant species have but a short life, and that 
their death appears to be due to the excesses of de- 
velopment. But there is nothing in this interest- 
ing, though obscure, group of phenomena to in any 
indicate that the establishment of a definite longev- 
ity can in any way be due to advantages won by 
internal selective processes. 

In view of all the facts, it seems most reasonable 
to suppose that the source of the actions which 
make for the institution of death at a fixed period 
of life lie outside of the limited field of natural 
selection; that the condition is enforced by laws such 
as control the other forms of matter, which deter- 
mine the shapes and other qualities of the atoms, 
molecules, and crystals. The most extreme selec- 
tionist will hardly seek to maintain that everything 
that takes place in the organic realm is due directly 
or indirectly to the survival of the fittest. This 
field of Nature is as much within the limits of the 



50 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ancient physical realm as is any other part of the 
universe. It is, in fact, but a small part of the in- 
organic matter that makes the earth which for the 
moment has come into the peculiar organic state. 
In a word, it is but a temporary manifestation of the 
life of the universe which normally abides in the 
lower modes of existence. We see that this matter 
takes on new functions with each change to which 
it is subjected. It has one mode of action in the 
atom or molecule, another in the crystal, the gase- 
ous, liquid, and solid state; but these are in nowise 
founded on the principle of immediate profit and 
loss. As such, indeed, we may regard the institu- 
tion of death at a fixed period. It is clearly in a 
large though remote way vastly profitable to the 
interests of life in general. It is not possible to 
see how advance could so well be made with the 
need of removing all the ancient and defective in- 
dividuals from the earth by some other process. It 
is in every way better that they should quietly give 
place to their successors, who are better fitted to do 
their work. But this passage is not the result of 
selective action due to the survival of the fittest. It 
appears to be an act of sacrifice which is enforced on 
the individual by a power more remote than the acts 
of its own ancestry, summed up and transmitted by 
the process of inheritance. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 

We have now to consider the question as to the 
duration of life in the individuals of the different 
organic groups. In the several series of plants and 
animals the determination of this period has led to 
rather varied results. In the lower members of the 
numerous series there is usually a somewhat wide 
range in the longevity of the persons. They appear 
gradually to wear out rather than to end at a definite 
period. As we rise in the scale of organization in 
the several organic series the term becomes more 
fixed, as by a law of the organization of each species. 
In general, it may be said that longevity is a spe- 
cific characteristic rather than one belonging to 
larger groups. It often happens that two rather 
closely related kinds of animals or plants may differ 
much as to the time when the decay of the body 
normally sets in. The range is greater in the vege- 
table kingdom, where kindred species may differ in 
5 51 



52 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the ratio of one to a hundred. Usually, though 
with many evident exceptions, the higher the struc- 
ture the more likely it is to be limited as regards its 
duration; and also that, the larger the form the 
greater the probability of an extended life. 

In many cases the longevity of a species is im- 
mediately adjusted to the climatal conditions in 
which it dwells. Thus, among the insects as well 
as many marine invertebrates, the duration of the 
individual is often fixed by the advent of frost or 
drought, the economy of the creature being so 
arranged that all of its kind pass the winter or the 
dry season in the egg state. Probably more than 
ninety per cent of the species of insects have this 
habit, and are thus limited to a very brief term of 
life; one which rarely exceeds half the year. As 
insects apparently constitute more than four fifths 
of the total number of animal species, it follows that 
by far the greater part of that kingdom endure for 
less than a year. 

Among the plants the seasonal limitation of 
longevity is quite as characteristic as among the 
animals, though it usually has a rather different 
mode of expression. In perhaps more than half 
the species the winter season is passed in the seed 
state, just as among the insects it is passed in that of 
the egg. In many forms, however, the roots live 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 53 

on though the tops in part or altogether die and 
all activities are suspended. It is a curious fact that 
this seasonal relation of the life of the plants and 
the invertebrates is not limited to those kinds which 
have been developed in the regions where frost 
occurs; it is nearly as noticeable in the tropics as in 
the lands beyond them. This is probably to be ex- 
plained by the effect of the dry months, which so 
often in equatorial lands brings a pause in vitality 
much like that induced by freezing. 

While the seasonal processes fix the life term of 
nearly all the invertebrates, as well as the greater 
number of the plants, many kinds escape these de- 
terminating conditions. In the sea only the surface 
and the shallow-water forms feel the annual changes 
of temperature; those of the deeper zones are inde- 
pendent of them. Our molluscs, generally because 
of their migratory habits, which take them some- 
what away from the shore line in the winter, are 
protected from the trials of that season. Although 
the plants do not migrate, their capacity for sus- 
pending their vital processes enables them to build 
very large communities, such as our trees. In 
a strict sense the commoner trees and shrubs are 
not individuals, but communities, in which each bud 
is to be reckoned as an individual, the whole plant 
resembling in most regards an association of polyps, 



54 THE INDIVIDUAL 

such as form our stony corals. Thus, while some 
of the greater trees, such as the sequoia, may per- 
haps attain a longevity of several thousand years, 
their life is that of a community; their individual 
buds have no such endurance; they are oftenest 
limited in duration to a single year. 

The most instructive variations in the measure 
of longevity are afforded by the species of articulate 
animals. As before noted, by far the greater num- 
ber of these have an annual term, one half of which 
is taken up by the processes of the egg. But among 
the marine articulates the life is often prolonged 
for years. Some of the larger crabs and lobsters 
probably endure for ten years or more; a few spe- 
cies may live on to near twenty years before attain- 
ing their fullest growth. Again, among the insects, 
while the perfect state is generally limited to a few 
months, certain of the bees live for years, and the 
same is probably true of the ants. As a whole, the 
lower life of both animal and vegetable kingdoms 
shows us a tendency to organize the individuals on 
the basis of what we may call the seasonal term. 
When we remember that all the organic forms are 
essentially the product of solar energy, it seems fit 
that they should awake with the coming of the sun 
and sleep upon its going. 

When we rise in the scale to the vertebrates we 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 55 

find at once a very great change in the duration of 
the individual. In no instance, so far as I have 
been able to find, is the life of a member of this 
group in any distinct way related, as in many lower 
animals, to the seasons or limited to a single year. 
The breeding period is determined by the seasonal 
changes, the greater number of the species having 
a definite age when they may breed; but in no case 
do the members of the species pass away at the end 
of one such period. Thus, while in the inverte- 
brates and plants the reproductive process comes to 
be the natural finish of the life term, it is never 
the case with the vertebrates. So far as I have 
been able to find, there is no instance where there 
are less than about a dozen breeding periods in the 
life of an individual vertebrate. Thus, in the ver- 
tebrates we have a general prolongation of life for 
a term much beyond that of any of the other types, 
unless it be possibly the Mollusca, a group which is 
by some naturalists regarded as more nearly related 
to the backboned animals than is any other of the 
lower series. Even there it is not probable that 
the individuals have nearly as long a term of life 
as is shown in the vertebrates. 

In all the lower parts of the animal kingdom 
except the insects, as has been previously observed, 
there is a lack of anything like a clear definition of 



56 THE INDIVIDUAL 

longevity. The creatures wear out in time; as soon 
as they weaken they are likely to be overcome by 
their enemies, or crowded out of the chances of 
subsistence by competition of their own kind. It 
is much the same with the lower vertebrates — the 
fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. In most species 
of those groups there is no distinct period when they 
are by degrees prepared for death. In the greater 
number of the kinds there is not even a definite age 
when the growth ceases. There is reason to believe 
that among some species of fishes life may be pro- 
longed to decades. It is claimed, on what appears 
to be fair evidence, that the carp may sometimes 
live for a century. The same appears to be the case 
with the reptiles: though there is a general size for 
the adults a slow growth seems to be indefinitely 
continued. As for the longevity in the reptilian 
series, it is most likely rather greater than among 
the fishes. In the tortoises it seems probable that it 
extends to a century or more. It is otherwise with 
the amphibians, at least with the frogs and toads; 
there the body quickly attains a fully definite maxi- 
mum size, which is probably associated with a rather 
brief life term. The lizardlike members of the 
group, the water dogs, newts, and their kindred, are 
rather like the reptiles and fishes in the indefinite- 
ness of the term when growth ceases. The peculiar 



THE DURATION OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 57 

limitation in size in the frogs and toads may be con- 
nected with their activity as jumpers, it being char- 
acteristic of the active species of animals to have 
their maximum bulk rather accurately determined. 

It is when we come to the birds that we begin 
to find a moderate degree of definiteness established 
for the term of life. In all the members of that 
group there is a distinctness in the period of growth 
which is measurable in years, if not in months, such 
as is found in none of the lower classes of verte- 
brates. The maximum size of individuals in each 
sj)ecies is determined within narrower limits than 
in any other of the type; this appears to be the most 
complete in the flying forms, the ground birds ex- 
hibiting a much greater individual variation. The 
reason for this may be, as in the case of the frogs 
and toads, that the high order of activity of the 
creatures requires a precision in their organization; 
a fitness to an exact mould which is not necessary in 
forms which have a less definite adjustment to the 
work they 'have to do. The insects are an ad- 
mirable example of the result of a high order of 
activity, and, consequently, of a very precise accom- 
modation of their bodies to an intense and definite 
round of existence, as is shown by the remarkable 
uniformity in the size and shape of the individuals 
of the same species. 



58 THE INDIVIDUAL 

As for the longevity of birds in their normal 
free state little is known, and that little is limited 
to a few species. There is evidence to warrant the 
assertion that the term of life is fairly well fixed, 
being in this regard only less determined than in 
the mammals; the range being about the same as in 
the higher class. At the shortest it may not exceed 
four or five years. For the longest, as in the case 
of the parrots, it may extend to near a hundred. 
In the birds we find rather clearer evidences of a 
limit proper to each species than in any of the lower 
types of the vertebrates. There appears, moreover, 
to be traces of an old age period. This may be 
noted in our caged birds and harvard fowl, when 
males and females which have passed the term of 
reproduction sometimes for years drag out a mis- 
erable existence, deprived of all the impulses which 
inspire the life of their fellow-creatures. In the 
wilds the bitter struggle for the chances of food 
and safety probably brings the end as soon as the 
vital powers feel the touch of age. Although 
they are ever fighting for life birds appear to be 
supremely joyful creatures. Their existence is one 
of incessant and merry activity, and death comes 
so quickly to the enfeebled that they suffer but 
little. 

In the Mammalia the definition of the growth. 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 59 

period is, in general, much less distinct than 
among the birds; but, so far as I have been able to 
find, the longevity is more accurately determined, 
though the range in the various species is probably 
considerably greater than among the feathered crea- 
tures. Among the mammals, as elsewhere, the 
large forms seem to be the longer lived. With 
small species, such as the lesser rodents, the term is 
probably from three to five years; squirrels cer- 
tainly live longer; they may attain to ten years. 
The small Ilerbivora, such as the sheep, have a nor- 
mal life of ten or twelve years. Our bulls live to 
perhaps twenty. Horses under the extreme care 
that is at times given to those valued, because of 
memorable associations, have lived to between thirty 
and forty years, but they bear the marks of old age 
at thirty. There is evidence, of apparent validity, 
going to show that elephants may live for more than 
two centuries. This has been questioned, but the 
undoubted fact that there is some proportion be- 
tween the bulk and the longevity affords some war- 
rant for this reckoning. It is in the order of 
the facts that this, the largest of the land ver- 
tebrates, should much exceed the others in dura- 
tion. 

It has been held that there exists a tolerably 
definite ratio between the length of the period of 



60 THE INDIVIDUAL 

growth and the normal duration of the life of a 
mammal, and that the longevity can be reckoned by 
multiplying the years of adolescence by five. It is 
easy to see that this reckoning does not apply to 
the birds, for there the growth period, with few ex- 
ceptions, is about the same, while the duration of 
life is exceedingly varied. For reasons before given 
it has no application to the other lower classes of the 
Vertebrata. In the mammals it may, as a general 
proposition, be regarded as approximately true, at 
least in those instances (in all but few) where we 
know at once the duration of adolescence and that 
of the normal longevity. As regards the term of 
growth, it is found impossible to fix its upper limit 
with any great certainty. The consolidation of the 
epiphyses of the long bones, which is generally taken 
to represent the end of the youth period, is of value 
only so far as the growth of the bones in question is 
concerned. The coming of puberty is of no value, 
as in practically all cases it much anticipates the 
cessation of growth. Still, in a general way, we 
can say that sheep are adult at somewhat less than 
three years, while they may live to twelve; horned 
cattle at about four; they may survive for twenty. 
Horses are full grown at five or six and often sur- 
vive to thirty years. In the elephants full growth 
seems not to be attained until about the fortieth 



THE DURATION OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 61 

year, and, as I have noted, they probably may en- 
dure for two hundred. 

In man the growth period is normally continued 
to some time after the twentieth year; its exact 
limit has not been ascertained, but, from the statis- 
tics gathered by the Sanitary Commission during the 
civil war, it seems most likely that it is not usually 
completed until after the thirtieth year, and may con- 
tinue yet later. This result is indicated from group- 
ing the measurements of American-born soldiers ac- 
cording to age. It affords a better basis for the deter- 
mination than that obtained from the consolidation 
of the bones in the limbs, and may be fairly accepted 
as well founded. As the natural longevity of man 
can not be reckoned at more than one hundred years, 
that being the limit of anything like a sound mental 
or physical life, it is evident that the term of five 
times the period of growth is not attained in our 
species. It is not necessary to say that the reason 
for this departure from the apparent rule of the 
Mammalia in our own kind is a matter of very great 
importance. So far little attention has been de- 
voted to it; in fact, as we shall see, the problem is 
one of singular difficulty.' 

In looking into the history of the apparent 
shortening in the term of human life, we should 
first note that the basis for the computation as to 



62 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the ratio between the period of adolescence and the 
endurance of the body to the tax of time is not 
wide enough to give any very high value to the as- 
sertion that among the kindred of men it is in any 
very definite manner established. Of the many 
hundred of species in the class of mammals the 
proportion is approximately known in perhaps two 
score. It is quite possible that the determinations 
which have been made in the consolidation of the 
epiphyses have led to an underreckoning of the 
period of youth. It may therefore be that the 
shortening of the human term is not so great as it 
appears. Nevertheless, the evidence is decidedly in 
favour of the supposition that the normal longevity 
of our own kind has in some measure been dimin- 
ished. The extent to which this is the case must 
await further study as to the time of maturity and 
the endurance of the anthropoid apes, the nearest 
kindred of our kind. On this point we have no 
trustworthy information: the inductions from the 
length of life these species attain in our zoological 
gardens js of no more value than would be that 
concerning the longevity of man which might 
be gathered from the records of our hospitals and 
prisons. 

Such abbreviation of his normal life as may have 
come to man can perhaps be accounted for by his 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 63 

peculiar position in relation to his habits and his 
environment. Upon him has come certain burdens 
and demands which the lower creatures have not 
had to bear. As these are not generally recognised, 
and as they have relation to the question as to 
the prolongation of life which we have to con- 
sider in the sequel, I shall give them a brief consid- 
eration. 

The most eminent peculiarity in the physical 
conditions of man is his upright position when in 
activity. This attitude, or a fair approach to it, is 
common enough in the higher apes as an occasional 
position; one taken when they are looking away 
and need to bring the eyes as far above the ground 
as possible. But for walking or running it is en- 
tirely limited to our kind, the nearest approach 
to it being in the jumping forms of the kangaroos 
or in the rodents of like habit, such as the jerboas. 
That it has been a long-continued habit in the 
ancestry of man is shown by the extensive changes 
in the proportions of the body which it has in- 
duced. These are notable in the foot, in the pelvis, 
and in the relative length of the fore and hind 
limbs. These differences are of such importance 
that on them alone we are entitled to regard man 
as a species far removed from the most humanlike 
ape that has as yet been discovered in a living 



64 THE INDIVIDUAL 

or fossil state.* If the intermediate forms between 
man and the highest of the living apes are ever dis- 
covered, we will have, not a " missing link/' but a 
long chain made up of many species. 

One of the effects of the upright position of 
man, perhaps the most important for our problem 
at least, is the increased tax which it puts upon the 
strength of the creature. The draught it makes on 
the body is in part shown by the difference in the 
rate of the pulse when lying down and when stand- 
ing up. This often amounts to about twelve beats 
in the minute, or as much as one sixth of the aver- 
age pulse rate. While many four-legged animals 
can sleep in a standing attitude, any repose in that 
position is denied to man. It requires the ceaseless 
activity of many muscles to keep him erect. There 
are various secondary taxes which the vertical trunk 
and the consequent great relative height inflicts 
upon us. That trunk took its shape in the long ex- 
perience of our kind from the fishes upward. It 
was formed in the thousands of species through 
which our life came in its later vertebrate stages 

* The fossil remains of a creature recently found in Java, 
and supposed by some naturalists to represent a species inter- 
mediate between man and the manlike apes, appear to the 
writer most likely to be those of some small-skulled degraded 
human being such as are often found among idiots. This 
matter must be regarded as still in debate. 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 65 

of ascent. In that original position parallel to the 
earth the several organs of the viscera, heart, lungs, 
digestive system, the reproductive apparatus, found 
a fit storage; no one of the parts to any consider- 
able extent presses upon the other. When, how- 
ever, the trunk is brought into the vertical position 
these organs press one upon the other in a way 
that tends to produce serious dislocations and dis- 
eases. It is not unlikely that the price man has to 
pay for converting his fore limbs to the higher uses 
of his will, the inestimable price for a very great 
gain, has had much to do with his general liability 
to disease, and the consequent relatively brief 
duration of his career. 

Another possible cause of the diminished lon- 
gevity of man is to be found in the very exceptional 
conditions of his breeding habit. In the Mammalia 
in general, probably in all the larger species up to 
man, with the possible exception of the apes, there 
is a breeding period arranged with reference to the 
seasons, so that the young only come forth in the 
plenteous time of the year. There is no doubt that 
this limitation of the reproductive functions to a 
part of the year tends to diminish the tax upon the 
life of the individual. The process is certainly tax- 
ing on the vitality; any such reduction of it as is 
afforded by the long pauses of the function, such as 



eQ THE INDIVIDUAL 

occur so generally below man, may be expected to 
have an effect in prolonging life. In man, how- 
ever, and perhaps in some of his simian kindred, 
there are no such breaks in the reproductive duty 
from the time the task begins until it is ended with 
old age or death. The need has apparently been to 
push this part of the work of the body as rapidly as 
possible, so that the risk of loss of the individual by 
a premature death might be lessened. 

It would be an interesting task to trace the pos- 
sible influences which have served so to change 
the breeding habit of our species from that we find 
in our lower kindred. We can, however, only note 
the fact that reproduction in the lower life ap- 
pears commonly to be adjusted to the conditions of 
sustenance. As before remarked, the arrangement 
is in general such that the first stages of the new 
life are begun where the parents have had a chance 
to profit by the time of the year when food is most 
abundant. The coming forth from the mother oc- 
curs at a season when she has the best chance to 
nourish the young from her teats, and when the off- 
spring may soon have opportunity to shift for itself. 
In the case of man we note that, being in his origin a 
tropical creature, he probably had from his ances- 
try a less definite seasonal relation of his reproduc- 
tion than those of his lower kindred that dwell in 



THE DURATION OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 67 

higher latitudes. Moreover, his miscellaneous hab- 
its of feeding made his sustenance at different times 
of the year more uniform than those of any other 
animal. It is likely that this uniformity in the 
quantity of the food supply has had something to 
do with the change. 

As to the longevity of the different varieties 
of man, there appears to be no other difference than 
such as may be well accounted for by the acci- 
dents of their lives. Negroes, American Indians, 
Chinese, Semites, and Aryans, so far as survival 
goes, all fall into the same group. Some of the 
tropical peoples have appeared to good observers to 
be evidently shorter lived than Europeans, but this 
is not proved. The cases cited are always those of 
conspicuously ill-fed tribes. This uniformity points 
to the conclusion that the establishment of longev- 
ity was affected in the prehuman series, and that 
it has been well imbedded in the habits of the body, 
so that if not unchangeable, it is at least obstinately 
fixed. This is made to appear the more likely from 
what we know of the adherence to the established 
duration of life in our domesticated animals. Some 
of these species, as, for instance, the dogs, have been 
very greatly changed from the parent stock, and this 
in many different ways; but, so far as we can see, 
there has been no sensible alteration in the limit of 



68 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the individual life. The larger varieties are perhaps 
somewhat the longer lived, but the contrast is ap- 
parently no greater than it is in mankind. Between 
a Great Dane and a tiny Mexican spaniel there is a 
difference in bulk of perhaps one to twenty; but 
the longevity of the larger form is certainly not 
twice that of the lesser. 

In various myths, especially in those of the Jew- 
ish sacred books, there are accounts of men having 
lived to an age several times as great as that to 
which experience shows that mankind really attain. 
It has reasonably been conjectured that these state- 
ments may be due to a transfer of a reckoning in 
moons — the common primitive measurement of time 
— to the later method of accounting by years. 

So far as accurate records indicate, it seems emi- 
nently probable that no man has attained to a 
greater age than about one hundred and five, or at 
most to one hundred and ten years. When we con- 
sider that each year some millions of people die con- 
cerning whom there is sufficient record to fix the 
time of their birth to the year, and that this condi- 
tion of our information has existed in some coun- 
tries for centuries, the fact that we have no well- 
attested case of survival through the eleventh dec- 
ade is very impressive. It shows clearly that if 
there be instances such as those claimed in the cases 



THE DURATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 69 

of Parr or of the Countess of Desmond, where life 
has been prolonged to about a century and a half, 
they are very exceptional; nothing but a complete 
chain of evidence, such as does not exist, would 
warrant any consideration of them. It may be said 
that all the alleged instances of survival beyond 
eleven decades have on examination proved apoc- 
ryphal. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NATUKE OF INDIVIDUALITY 

It has been necessary in the preceding chapters 
to use the term " Individual " without giving it the 
definition which it evidently needs. To discern the 
large relation of the term we must first notice that 
it is by no means limited to ourselves, or even to 
the organic realm — it concerns the whole of Nature; 
for, as has already been noted, every part of the 
material universe as to which we have knowledge 
reveals individualities. 

Looked at in a broad way we may thus define 
an individual: Wherever in the natural realm lines 
of action, or of action and resistance, are so related 
that a localized movement is established, then, for 
the time of the localization, we have an individual- 
ized part of the whole. If, as seems likely, the 
ether oscillates in the passage of energy through it, 
then according to this definition each of these mov- 
ing parts is, while in motion, to be accounted an 
70 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 71 

individual, the simplest we can as yet fairly con- 
ceive, though there may be an endless succession of 
lesser included centres of activity in the infinite of 
the small that lies below that apparent infinitesimal. 
When single impulses of energy act on matter, the 
individuality created thereby may be regarded as 
temporary, for as the impulse is passed on the ac- 
tion ceases. But it is evident that in Nature vari- 
ous impulses concur to establish more or less endur- 
ing assemblages of actions at certain points in the 
realm. These are, in their various grades, the indi- 
vidualities we are considering. 

We can form no very clear picture as to the 
precise mode in which the natural forces combine 
their action in the creation of an individual; but we 
are probably not leading ourselves astray if we give 
them a diagrammatic expression by means of very 
numerous, perhaps innumerable, straight lines pass- 
ing in any direction through space, they having in 
effect endless differences of value. These lines may 
be taken to express not only action, but such resist- 
ances as those of inertia, etc. When these lines in- 
tersect, according to the proposition, we would have 
a centre of action of movement of some kind or 
kinds. If the actions were simple and balanced, 
they might conceivably give rise to the atomic unit, 
or lowest grade of permanent individual. We have 



72 THE INDIVIDUAL 

now to conceive that eacli of these simple products 
of energy, or of energy and resistance, becomes, in 
turn, a centre from which new forms of action go 
forth. Out of these and the continuing antecedent 
actions arise higher, compounded units, each in pro- 
portion to its gain in grade becoming more and 
more a centre of influence; sending impulses in a 
larger share to the environment and, in turn, re- 
ceiving more therefrom; becoming more potent 
with every advance and enlargement, but at the 
same time becoming commonly more unstable, more 
certain, in the end, to fall before the storm of ac- 
tions. We properly imagine the forces of Nature to 
act continuously and with equal value under like 
conditions, but we have to bear in mind the fact 
that when two or more variable streams of energy 
each qualifying the other, are acting together, we 
must expect to find sudden changes in the measure 
and even in the essential nature of the result their 
action produces. 

I have in another chapter chosen the critical 
points of water for illustration of this and other 
features, for the reason that they are familiar 
and their effects may be easily apprehended, not 
because they are in any way peculiar (see p. 293). 
They are but a part of an infinite number of just 
such actions as are everywhere in progress in the 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 73 

fields of Nature — in the organic as well as in trie 
lower realm of purely physical activity. In fact, it 
may be taken as a truth of wide extension that 
while the operations of energy in the visible uni- 
verse are on continuous lines their results are 
broken by various processes of interference with 
substantially the same kind of result as we find 
in the conditions of water under the influence 
of heat, with resulting sudden changes in the 
nature of the phenomena, though the actions 
themselves exhibit no such sudden changes. It is 
not very difficult to see how, in any centre of many 
impulses and resistances, what we have termed the 
essential individual, the equations of the forces 
would necessarily result in stable balanced condi- 
tions being formed from time to time, each followed 
by sudden rearrangements of a catalytic sort aris- 
ing from the access of a new impulse, or a change in 
the value of some one or more of the old. It is 
interesting to note that in certain mathematical 
series there occur breaks in the succession where the 
order of succession might well be supposed to lead 
to continuity. Thus, in this ghost of the real world 
which the mathematics affords us, we see what 
appears to be the same principle of critical points 
which we find actualized in the material realm. 
The foregoing ideal picture of the manner in 



74 THE INDIVIDUAL 

which natural impulses are related in the centres 
in which they interact one upon another is most 
likely far from expressing the full truth of the 
matter; but it pretty surely contains much that is 
true, for it helps us greatly in our efforts to conceive 
the nature of individuals of diverse grades as well as 
many of their phenomena which would otherwise 
be inexplicable. Beginning with the atom, we find 
a reason for its unchangeableness in supposing that 
it represents the action of completely equilibrated 
forces so conditioned that they are not effectively 
interfered with by any others from without or with- 
in. The molecule, because of its greater internal 
complication, is presumably less stable in its organi- 
zation, and, because of its more extended relations 
to other bodies, is more readily applied by disturb- 
ing influences. In the exceedingly complicated 
molecules of certain carbon compounds, wherein 
there are hundreds or thousands of atoms, and where 
the external and the internal conditions begin to 
have entangled relations, the measure of instability 
due to the occurrence of critical points naturally 
becomes great. While the individual atoms may re- 
ceive strains which tend to their disruption, it may 
well be that their equations of their forces are stable 
enough to resist change in all the conditions which 
we can apply to them. But with the complicated 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 75 

molecules it may be otherwise, for they necessarily 
have a far larger field of relations than the units 
of which they are composed. 

On the considerations above suggested we may 
somewhat enlarge our definition of an individual 
from that just made by saying that it is a plexus 
where natural impulses are combined to produce 
new results which are likely suddenly to come about. 
It follows from this that each individual is sure to 
be in some measure a centre of organization — not of 
energy, for the sum of that is constant, but of new 
modes of operation of that energy. It follows also 
that the individual, in proportion to its complica- 
tion, enters into relations with its environment, giv- 
ing and receiving more and more varied impulses 
with its rise in complexity, and therefore becoming 
necessarily with its advance ever more unstable. It 
does not necessarily follow that this instability leads 
to final destruction of the individual, though it must 
tend in that direction. It may happen that the 
large number of the interactions may indeed insure 
its perpetuation. In any finite aggregate of high 
order where the static conditions of the atom or 
the molecule can not be attained we should expect 
the instabilities to result in the end in dissolution 
at some critical point. 

If the above-stated view as to the nature of the 



76 THE INDIVIDUAL 

individual be correct, we see that there are certain 
clearly evident relations between the organic and the 
inorganic units. They both alike receive energy, 
and transmit or transmute it; they both exchange 
relations with the environment; they both increase 
in instability — i. e., in the measure in which they 
affect and are affected by their surroundings,, as they 
advance in complication; they both are due to some 
kind of centring and balancing of physical impulses; 
they differ essentially in that the organic individ- 
ual has acquired a capacity for successive changes 
due to the appropriation of experience, and that it 
has acquired ways whereby this experience can be 
transmitted so that its results may be accumulated 
in successive forms. In a word, the organic unit is 
not only unstable in many different ways, but has 
turned this instability to account by a process of 
generational education which enables it to adapt 
itself to and profit by its environment in a way 
that was impossible in the individuals of lower 
grade. 

It may be noted, furthermore, that the higher 
the individuality the more completely it may in~ 
elude all the lower in itself. Thus, the simplest 
molecule includes atoms; those of more complexity 
groups of atoms; the simplest organic form a host 
of complicated and simple molecules. The higher 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 77 

species have groupings into parts, which are often 
essentially distinct creatures though centred in a 
single person. The whole of an organic realm is 
a part of a celestial sphere, as that sphere is of 
a solar system, and that, in turn, of greater stellar 
associations. Such appears to be the order of indi- 
vidualities. They are distinct because they represent 
localized modes of action; they are absolutely 
blended with the whole because the whole is a 
unit; it may be termed " the supreme individual," 
which has all its relations within itself. 

When the greater individual passes away the 
lesser individualities of which it was composed are 
parted from the association. When the molecule 
ceases to be the atoms persist; where the organic 
form perishes its molecules or atoms, as the case 
may be, are free to set about new tasks. After 
all such destructions, even of the simplest individ- 
uals, there remains something that is not and can 
not be destroyed. This, if no more, is the work 
done during its life. As we have seen, every 
individual, from its very nature, is a place where 
the energy which comes to it from without — in ef- 
fect, the influence of other beings — is transformed 
into new modes of action. This is generally true of 
all forms above the plane of the atom, and it may be 
true there also. As we rise in the scale of com- 



78 THE INDIVIDUAL 

plexity the individuals become more and more po- 
tent in their effect on the world about them. When 
we attain to the grade of men we find the creature 
doing a vast work, the most of it far below or be- 
yond the plane of consciousness, a fact that in no- 
wise lessens the importance of what is done. In his 
body he has stored the experience in life of per- 
haps a hundred thousand species and incalculable 
separate ancestors. This he may send on as an or- 
ganized whole, with such additions as his own life 
may make to the store. In his personal activities 
he starts inconceivably numerous trains of action 
that quickly lose their evident connection with his 
self, but are none the less of his own creation and 
are forever influential. If we could obtain an ulti- 
mate analysis of what is at work in the world about 
us, shaping the minds and the destinies of mankind, 
we would doubtless find there the deeds of all the 
vanished units of our race, each having a share, 
great or small, in the human activity of the present 
moment. 

So far we have chosen to consider the organic 
individual in its most perfect aspect, that of ap- 
parently complete separation from the world about 
it; though, as we have seen, united to that world by 
an incessantly active and practically infinite number 
of exchanges, so that the isolation is in appearance, 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY ?9 

and not in reality. We have still further to correct 
this conception of individuality by noting that the 
greater number of the kinds act not alone but in 
assemblages of their species, and that their activities 
are more or less married to those of their kindred. 
Sometimes the union is bodily, sometimes mental, 
or it may be a combination of the two. But in all 
cases it results in a more or less complete blending 
of the creature with its kindred — a blending that 
may be so complete as to make it appear but an 
insignificant part of a whole association. This 
is most evident in certain of the lower invertebrates, 
as in the compound corals and the sponges, where 
the separate creatures are linked together so that 
they form a colony which has its individual life. 
In many other species this colonial order is likewise 
so perfect in the manner common in the plants that 
we look upon the association as the real individual. 
In the higher forms of life, where the intelligence 
becomes well developed, the sympathies link the 
individiials in the higher unit of the family, the 
tribe, or the state. This sympathetic union may go 
so far that the separated mates are likely to perish 
from the sorrow of parting. How far this mental 
union of the individual with his fellows has gone 
in mankind it is not necessary to set forth. 

In the higher groups of animals where the per- 



80 THE INDIVIDUAL 

son has become too important to have its life 
merged in a structural colony, such as a polyp com- 
munity, it commonly proceeds to amplify itself by 
developing a host of minor individual parts, each of 
which becomes, in a way, a separate unit of the 
body. Thus, in the crinoids, the first of the ani- 
mals of distinctly radiated structure to abandon the 
method of communal life so general in the group, 
and to attain a relatively high station as a solitary 
form, the initial step in the advancing series con- 
sists in the adoption of an external covering made 
up of very many distinct polygonal plates. Each of 
these has its separate centre of growth, and in its 
development manifests what we may term a sympa- 
thetic independence of the neighbouring plates. 
That is, each is as completely individualized as is 
consistent with the needs of its place in an organic 
whole and its relations to adjacent units of a like 
nature. Every one of the separate bits has a certain 
likeness to every other. The order of their archi- 
tecture is the same, repeating the radiate symmetry 
so characteristic of the whole framework. The 
same tendency to allot the control of the body to 
subordinate individualities is to be observed in all 
the higher organisms. It may indeed be fairly 
asserted that all the great advances in the series of 
animals have been accomplished by this method 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 81 

of delegating functions to parts which become the 
seats of separate partially independent life. 

The obvious likeness of those animals,, such as 
the articulates and vertebrates, with their many in- 
dividualized segments, each much resembling the 
other, to what we find in such communal forms as 
the compound polyp, where the association is made 
up of essentially independent creatures, has led to 
the conjecture that perhaps these higher forms were 
originally communities, as in the polyps, composed 
of separate individuals that were associated in a 
longitudinal order, as are the several rings in the 
worms, the once distinct creatures having become 
united. Although this view has, for good reasons, 
not been accepted by naturalists, it is in the face of 
the facts very plausible, and goes to show how gen- 
eral and effective is this curious tendency to estab- 
lish individualities of a high order of independence 
within the larger body. While the particular form 
of these secondary individualities of the organic body 
may in part be due to natural selection, their in- 
vention, like all such origins, must be attributed to 
some more remote influence. 

The facts which are briefly noted in the fore- 
going account of individualities justify the state- 
ment that along with the tendency to create sepa- 
rate centres of action goes the tendency to combine 



82 THE INDIVIDUAL 

these units according to their kinds into larger 
associations, each having also their individual char- 
acter. Of these, human societies are the highest 
that we know. They represent the extreme term of 
a vast series of endeavour, begun in the remote past 
and continued in ceaseless experiments, which ap- 
pear to have determinedly led to the social structure 
of which we form a part, and into which we are 
forced by the control which is over us to cast our 
lives, finding in so doing the fullest satisfaction 
that a being can know. It is a wonderful history. 
It must be well read before we are in a position to 
pass judgment on the scheme of life and death. 

It is in the nature of man that he should seem 
to himself commonplace. In his ordinary experi- 
ence he is set forth to his consciousness as a fairly 
discerned assemblages of impressions, memories, and 
motives. Although little of these possessions is at 
any one moment in the field of view, it seems 
that the whole is well known to us, after the 
manner of the contents of our pockets or the furni- 
ture of the room we know best. It is indeed almost 
unthinkable that we have not always been much as 
we are now. It is past conception to the grown 
man that he was ever as a newborn babe, with no 
more individual quality than was sent with him 
over the bridge of the generations. It is quite out 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 83 

of our power to realize the fact that what we are is 
as a vast complex of all that has been before in the 
chain of beings through which our lives have been 
derived. 

It would be most unfortunate for us if that faint 
illumination of a little part of our being which we 
term consciousness were a great light that shone 
back over the long procession: for the sight of the 
perspective would be confounding. It is clearly for 
the best that with his limited powers a man should 
see no more of himself than what he needs in order 
that his action may be fitly directed. Yet it is well 
to have some conception of what is the nature of 
this complex which man calls himself. Such 
knowledge can never in any considerable manner 
extend or qualify this strangely limited concept of 
personality. This, because it is primal and instinc- 
tive, will ever remain substantially what the ancient 
experience has made it. Still, the use of this knowl- 
edge may, in an indirect way, affect our state of 
mind by developing what may be termed a kind of 
supraconsciousness or upper plane of the selfhood, 
whence the individual may look down upon his 
more instinctive motives. In my own limited en- 
deavours to attain this higher plane enough has 
been gained to show that the detachment by the 

new manner of regarding the self may be sufhcient- 

7 



84 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ly developed to afford a certain addition to the store 
of personality — one that greatly enlarges its scope 
and adds much to the value of life. I therefore 
venture to offer certain suggestions as to the ways 
in which it is possible and profitable to consider 
ourselves in the light of our history. 

Putting aside the more obstruse inquiries of the 
psychologist because of the difficulty of approaching 
this field without professional training, we find that 
there is enough that is patent to ordinary observa- 
tion to break down the commonplace view of our 
nature that comes from the ordinary reiterated ex- 
perience with ourselves. Thus we readily observe 
that a certain store of capacities, in fact, nearly all 
that mark man as an animal or denote him as a 
man, come to him over the generational bridge from 
the life that was before. All that the development 
of these ancestral qualities does for a man is to am- 
plify that which is thus handed to him. "We thus 
see, at the very outset, that there is an essential delu- 
sion in this conception of ourselves as independent. 
Going further into the matter, we note that the 
lower animals — particularly our nearer bodily kin- 
dred of the Mammalia, and the birds, which though 
physically more remote are spiritually near to our- 
selves — share with us in the greater part of the 
motives common to our kind. Love, hate, fear, 



THE NATURE OF INDIVIDUALITY 85 

curiosity — nearly all the emotions that are found 
in men are found in them in like association. If 
we acknowledge the relation by generations of 
these creatures to ourselves, it becomes plain that 
all these attributes of the higher life owe their like- 
ness to the common store of experience which all 
have shared in their ancestral life. 

The foregoing considerations as to the enchain- 
ment of all the individual intelligences of this 
earth may in some measure serve to correct our 
notion as to the separateness of our life. Yet it is 
open to those who hold the idea that the mind of 
man is essentially individual to claim that all we 
receive from our ancestors is a certain vacant poten- 
tiality which may or may not have its empty spaces 
filled by individual experience. To some of these 
people the inheritance that comes to us over the 
generational bridge appears as no more than a mere 
formula in which all the concrete that gives it defi- 
nite value is derived from the personal life. That 
such is not the case should be evident on a mere 
inspection of the facts. We see the progeny of all 
creatures, from the simplest to those of our kind, 
breeding true as regards all ancient and well-estab- 
lished features. It is not possible to give any 
rational explanation of this without stating in some 
terms that what we behold is one continued life — a 



86 THE INDIVIDUAL 

life that may improve or degrade as it goes on from 
station to station — which sinks in the germ to the 
essentially invisible, or expands almost infinitely in 
the adult form, but which is inseparably one. This 
judgment may be helpfully affirmed by considering 
what takes place in the simplest conditions of the 
reproductive process, as in the lower Protozoa. 

In those animals where the increase is by the di- 
vision of the body into equal or nearly equal parts, it 
is evident that the child is but the continuation of 
the parent, none of the parts or functions in any way 
passing into an invisible state in the generational 
process, every feature and attribute remaining per- 
fectly unimpaired. Although the passage from 
this simplest state of reproduction to that in which 
the work is done by means of the egg is not com- 
pletely to be traced, enough of it is known to war- 
rant the opinion that no change in the essential 
principle of the process occurs in the transition. 
At every step in the advance toward the higher 
method of passing on the life, more and more the 
form and method of action of the bodily parts is 
packed away into the reproductive units, to be ex- 
panded by growth into functioning structures. 
Still, we have to believe that, save in this conversion 
of the discernible shape into the indiscernible, there 
is no difference of value between the reproduction 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 87 

by mere division and that which takes place through 
the method of the impregnated egg. 

At first sight the transmission of anything like 
thought may seem to be essentially more difficult 
than that of structures alone. We have, however, 
to believe that the brain, which is the instrument 
of our thinking, is, to the utmost of our details, de- 
termined by inheritance; at least until the individ- 
ual life has begun to shape it. And even when this 
independent personality has gone far to give his 
brain a peculiar stamp, the inherited features must 
greatly preponderate. Conceiving then that the 
production of thought depends upon the action of 
cells or other elements of the cerebrum, it does not 
appear to be improbable that they may, because of 
their shape or condition, afford the way to thought 
such as was the product of the ancestral forms on 
which they are moulded. It is not necessary to sup- 
pose that thought is a mere secretion of the brain 
cells in order to hold the view just above siiggested. 
We need to do more than recognise the fact that 
there is some immediate connection between the 
state of the mechanism and the thought that pro- 
ceeds from it. Come whence the thought may, if 
its coming be in any way the result of the condition 
of the brain, a particular state of that organ, such as 
may be altogether due to ancestral influences, may, 



88 THE INDIVIDUAL 

indeed must, be conceived as giving rise to a definite 
mental process. 

Taking it to be a fair hypothesis that the shape 
of the brain, as determined by inheritance, may give 
rise to some kind of thought, the question arises 
whether we find in our experience any mental ac- 
tions or products which can reasonably be referred 
to the antecedent life and regarded as due to ances- 
tral experience. To approach this question with 
care we should first note that the kind of mental 
work that would come to us from the spontaneous 
action of the inherited parts, if such come at all, is 
by no means clear. Yet we might reasonably ex- 
pect that any elements of thought which were thus 
introduced into our minds would appear in a de- 
tached and fragmentary form. We are led to this 
supposition by what we know of inherited instinct 
whenever we see the results of a process which is 
clearly in the same field as that in which suspected 
phenomena would lie. These emotional features 
come to us as rather vague impulses which in most 
cases need to be more or less compounded with per- 
sonal experience in order that they may be efficient. 
Thus, in the emotion of fear, all that is derived 
from the life before our own is a feeling that is 
characteristically ill defined. It attains shape only 
when it is informed by the sensations and ideas 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 89 

that are of an immediate individual nature. It is 
perhaps as incomplete and fragmentary elements 
of thought that we should expect to find any con- 
tributions that depended for their existence on the 
action of the inherited features of our brains and 
not upon the stimulus derived from personal ex- 
perience. 

In seeking for any evidence of what we may 
term inherited or automatic thought, I have been 
led to observe a group of rather obscure phenomena 
which has received less attention than it appears to 
deserve. The facts to which I would call atten- 
tion may be noted under the following conditions: 
If we carefully, and with a skill which is gained 
only by some training, slow down the normal activi- 
ties of the mind, so as to clear it as far as possible 
of the ideas that the environment normally induces, 
we may, with close attention, note that from time to 
time, often in quick succession, there appear what 
for convenience we may term seeds of thought — 
most commonly in my individual experience these 
take the shape of visual images — rarely that of 
sounds, most rarely they are presented as a word. 
It is characteristic of these presentations that unless 
at once seized upon by the attention, and in some 
way linked to the more vigorous elements of the 
mind, they quickly fade away; so that in a very 



90 THE INDIVIDUAL 

brief time, probably not more than a few seconds, 
they are not only gone, but can not be recalled by 
any effort of the memory. They are indeed most 
elusive, being in that regard, to my apprehension, 
distinctly different from the ordinary store of the 
mind which clearly rests on experience. 

The way in which the above-noted seeds of 
thought enter the mind is in a measure peculiar. 
They appear to come in an entirely sporadic man- 
ner, and not to be connected in any way with the 
ordinary mental occupations of the observer. Thus, 
if in the moment before sleep, when the mind has 
become cleared of the burden of the day, we retain 
consciousness enough to watch what occurs, we may 
note these suggestions flashing like meteors out of 
the darkness, to remain bright but for an instant. 
If they happen to fall upon some material of ordi- 
nary experience they may, by combining with it, 
attain enough permanence to start a dream, but 
usually they disappear without even this slight 
result. 

Where true sleeping dreams occur they some- 
times afford what may be taken as clearer instances 
of spontaneous thought than those which are ob- 
servable in the conscious state. Although with 
some people there appears to be a tendency in sleep 
for the mind to revert to the events of experience 



THE NATURE OP INDIVIDUALITY 91 

had during waking, it is normal for the suggestions 
which are shaped into dreams to be curiously apart 
from the ordinary events of life. In my own case, 
so far as I have been able to examine into the origin 
of dreams, few, if any of them, appear to be con- 
nected with the events of actual life. That is, the 
seed or centre of the thought is most apt to be 
foreign to all my waking experience or imaginings, 
having the same measure of novelty that belongs 
to the fancies of other people of which I have heard 
or read. It is true that much of the matter that 
gathers about the primary concept of the dream 
may be such as is recognisable as a part of the old 
store of experience of the mind; but the funda- 
mental notion seems to be characterized by its 
strangeness. 

It appears to be a characteristic of these spon- 
taneous thoughts that they are in the nature of 
images, though they may be in the form of sounds, 
possibly of words. Those I have most clearly dis- 
cerned are all visualized bits of facts, such as slight 
landscapes or groupings of people or animals; some- 
times the form of a man; perhaps oftenest a human 
face. In no case are the suggestions, until they 
appear to be associated with personal experience, at 
all complicated. Such are the features which we 
would expect thoughts due to inheritance to ex- 



92 THE INDIVIDUAL 

liibit. The}' would probably be simple, of an accent 
so slight that they would be readily overlaid by 
those due to the senses. They would, moreover, 
tend to abide outside of the field of consciousness, 
for the reason that their way of coming to the mind 
was essentially abnormal. These are, it is true, but 
conjectures; yet they are warranted by what we 
can note in the phenomena of the emotions which 
we have to accept as the results of inherited 
structure. 

Some evidence in favour of the hypothesis that 
concrete thought may be inherited is afforded by 
the nature of the actions where the mind, for any 
reason, becomes so disordered that it is the prey to 
delusions. In this condition the control of the 
individual consciousness over the mental processes 
is lost, and, as in dreams, accidental suggestions of 
a kind that can hardly rest in experience may rule 
the mind. Thus, it has been remarked by alienists 
that pure-minded women, concerning whom it is 
impossible to believe that thought or action have 
laid the foundations of obscene thoughts, will when 
insane show by their speech that they are afflicted 
by indecent images. In general, it may be said that 
mad people appear to suffer from the vivid presenta- 
tion of thoughts that are not their own by any le- 
gitimate personal right, but appear to come to them 



THE NATURE OF INDIVIDUALITY 93 

in some obscure manner, such as may be explained 
by the supposition that, owing to the loss of the 
control which the consciousness normally exercises, 
the spontaneous thoughts, as in sleep, gain a 
strength that sanity denies them. 

It is evident that the suggestion that the phys- 
ical mechanism of the brain of itself may produce 
thoughts which are not the product of personal ex- 
perience, is in accord with the common empir- 
ical judgment which men of all ages and races have 
made as to the nature of insanity, which is in effect 
that the afflicted are possessed by ideas not truly 
their own, but suggested by some other personality 
— as by evil spirits. Without giving too much value 
to this ancient view as to the nature of insanity, it 
may fairly be held that the consensus of opinion, to 
the effect that the control of the madman is in 
some way beyond his true self, has some weight 
in the argument we are following. In all such 
popular opinions, however much of error there may 
be, there remains the verdict of the great jury which 
is apt, in some measure, to hold essential truth. In 
this matter the judgment is that we have to deal 
with two conditions of the individual. In one of 
these — the sane — actions are controlled by thought 
that rests upon experience, which is controlled by 
the body of such experiences that memory supplies; 



94 THE INDIVIDUAL 

in the other — the insane — the suggestions come 
from some source beyond the field whence they are 
commonly derived — much as they do in dreams. 
This general recognition of the essentially foreign 
nature of the suggestions that move those who are 
mad, so far as it goes, tends to support the idea 
that there is some other source of thought than that 
which personal experience affords. 

It would be interesting to consider in more de- 
tail the relation of this hypothesis of spontaneous 
thought to the theory of the individual life. To do 
this would lead us too far from our main purpose. 
I shall therefore briefly sum up the matter as fol- 
lows: What we perceive in the evident inheritance 
of the emotional side of the mind, and of instinctive 
actions, apparently indicates that the frame which 
we inherit can of itself produce a kind of mental 
product, which, though distinct from ordinary 
thoughts or visual images, is not widely parted from 
these higher products of the brain. What Ave ob- 
serve as to the process of thought in peculiar condi- 
tions of the body — as in sleep, in insanity, or in 
the state of quiescence to which we can with care 
reduce our minds — appears to show that germs of 
thought not founded on individual experience are 
spontaneously produced. Further, that the uni- 
versal judgment of men is to the effect that, in 



THE NATURE OF INDIVIDUALITY 95 

the insane state at least, actions may be controlled 
by such, impersonal thought. Thus, while it can 
not be assumed that the hypothesis is verified, 
it may be said that it offers a fair solution of 
problems which do not otherwise seem to be ex- 
plicable. 

The question remains as to how far the hypoth- 
esis of spontaneously generated thought may af- 
fect our conception of individuality. To answer 
this we should at first note the point that, assuming 
the structure of the brain, as determined by inherit- 
ance, to generate or disclose thought independent 
of experience, it does not follow that such thought 
has its shape because of the specific ideas of our an- 
cestors. It would be more likely that, while some 
relation to the ancestral thinking existed, the mat- 
ter would be greatly altered in the transmission, so 
that the relation between the old and the new 
would be that of genus or species and not of iden- 
tity. We may conceive it as analogous to the move- 
ments of our limbs. Each of these motions is due 
to inherited features, developed in our ancestors, of 
varied degree, by their actions; indeed, altogether 
shaped by them; but the acts are personal and not 
ancestral. It is also evident that, while spontane- 
ous thought may possibly have a considerable share 
in affording; material for the use of the constructive 



96 THE INDIVIDUAL 

imagination, it has little relation to the conduct of 
an ordinary sane life. That life is, by the moderat- 
ing effect of the balance wheel of consciousness, kept 
well within the control of real experience, so that 
while the control is effective, as it is in the waking 
life, the man is essentially individual. In that state 
his thought is effectively determined by its personal 
experience with the environment. 

Whatever be the origin of the spontaneous 
thought which comes to us in a form to show that 
it is unrelated to immediate experience, it is clear 
that it is a possible source of intellectual values that 
are in this age much neglected. There is reason to 
believe that our systematic education, tending as 
it does to limit thinking to matters which are sug- 
gested by the exercised attention, tends to make 
men increasingly less sensitive to these automatic 
contributions to their minds. The most evident 
effect is to be found in the loss of the poetic faculty 
in those who have by long training become de- 
pendent on the senses for the stimulus of their 
imaginations. It seems to me probable that the main 
difference between practical and poetical minds of 
like general capacity lies in the use which they have 
become accustomed to make of the spontaneously of- 
fered germs of thought. My own experience serves 
to show that it is possible by attention to increase 



THE NATURE OF INDIVIDUALITY 97 

the share of thought that apparently arises inde- 
pendently of experience, and that it may be done 
even at an age when the habits of the mind are rela- 
tively fixed. This is, however, a large question — 
one that does not fairly concern that we have in 
hand. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PLACE OF ORGANIC LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 

Before we go further in the consideration of 
the facts relating to death, we should somewhat ex- 
tend our view as to the place of life in the physical 
universe. Standing as we do in relation to organic 
phenomena, there is a certain danger that we may fail 
to estimate its proportion to the whole as it should 
be reckoned. The tendency is to look upon the ma- 
terial world as a mere corner stone to that we are 
pleased to call the living nature. To correct this 
natural prejudice, let us glance at the place which 
the organic occupies in the whole realm — for our 
purpose the task may be briefly done. 

Let us first note that all the organic life we 
know is made possibly by the conditions of water at 
certain temperatures — i. e., between about 150° F. 
and the freezing point of the fluid, 32° F. Although 
some living forms in certain states, as that of 
spores, can for a time survive above the first-named 
98 



ORGANIC LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 99 

temperature;, it is doubtful if any but a very few 
can maintain life in such conditions. In fact, we 
may regard the vital range as essentially limited to 
not more than 100° F. Comparing this range with 
that of the heat in the earth and in the realms be- 
yond, what do we find? The facts, so far as we 
have learned them, are as follows: 

On the surface of the earth the extreme varia- 
tion^, except that of materials brought from below, 
is perhaps from 120° F. above to about 100° F. be- 
low the freezing point, so that life occupies about 
one half the range that is due to the earth's climatal 
conditions. In the depths of the earth there is evi- 
dently a very high temperature. We have no means 
of measuring it with accuracy, but it can not well 
be less than some tens of thousands of degrees. Call- 
ing it, say, 10,000° F., we conclude that life has a 
place in not more than one hundredth part of the 
limit of heat that the earth exhibits. In the sun 
the temperature is evidently very much higher than 
on the earth. It is a general belief among the 
students of solar physics that the heat there is to 
be reckoned as not less than 100,000° F. Thus meas- 
ured on the temperatures of the solar system, the 
possible field of organic life occupies not more than 
the one thousandth part of the scale. 

In terms of time the importance of organic life 



100 THE INDIVIDUAL 

is likewise apparently insignificant. It could not 
have come into being nntil the earth had cooled 
down to a point where the seas were near the tem- 
perature at which we now find them, and until the 
heat of the sun had come to about its present state. 
This antecedent time included the ages during 
which the solar system was evolved from the nebu- 
lous form and brought into the present condition. 
We have no means of knowing how great this time 
was, but it certainly must have been vastly longer 
than all that has elapsed since life began to be. It 
was most likely of such duration that the organic 
period if set against it would appear a mere nothing. 
Beyond the present, probably far beyond even in the 
geologic sense, there is reason to believe that the 
heat of the sun will remain as it has held for many 
millions of years, to maintain animals and plants in 
existence; but inevitably the source of that life in 
the sun's heat must fail. Further than that end we 
can not see, save that there is no limit to duration. 
It is possible that after a time the solar system 
may, by collision with some other mass, be recon- 
verted into disseminated matter again, to undergo 
the process by which it is rebuilt into sun and 
planets. Be this as it may, the fact is clear that 
the organic period of this world, or of any like 
conditioned sphere, is but a moment when measured 



ORGANIC LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 101 

against the time required in the processes of the 
suns. 

Considering the proportion of the matter of the 
earth which is at any one time in the vitalized state, 
we find the proportionate value in like measure insig- 
nificant. If all the living forms of to-day were 
brought down upon the surface of the earth their 
bodies would form a layer of material which would 
probably not exceed a foot in thickness, or about 
one forty millionth of the earth's diameter — a mere 
film on the surface of the sphere — an infinitesimal 
part of that mass which can never feel the vital im- 
pulse. Small as this share is, it is vast as compared 
with the essentially lifeless masses of the solar sys- 
tem. The sun is of course excluded, as all such 
heated bodies necessarily are, from any opportunity 
to share in organic experience. The interior 
planets, Mercury and Yenus, are so near the sun 
that their temperatures in the daytime must be far 
above the limit at which water can play its part 
in organic work, a part which is essential to the pro- 
cesses of life. Moreover, recent observations on 
these planets appear to indicate that they do not 
revolve on their axes after the manner of the earth, 
but hold one face toward the sun as the moon does 
to the earth. They have therefore to be excluded 
from the viable realm. 



102 THE INDIVIDUAL 

Of the outer planets the only one which can pos- 
sibly be the seat of organic life is Mars. This 
sphere receives about one third less heat than the 
earth. Such a difference if brought to bear on our 
own orb would at once bring every part of its surface 
permanently below the freezing point. It is pos- 
sible that Mars may have a deeper atmosphere, or 
one more effectively resistant to the radiation of 
heat, and so have its surface kept at a life-giving 
temperature. It is, however, doubtful if such be 
the case. The question is one of much difficulty, 
but in the opinion of those observers who have ap- 
proached the problem without prejudice and with 
the highest professional skill, the probabilities are 
that Mars is without seas or any general water sys- 
tem, and that it is unsuited to such organic life as 
that of this earth. Therefore, so far as we can 
learn, the living beings of our solar system are 
limited to the earth. We can not well suppose that 
it has ever existed on any other of the planets ex- 
cept possibly Mars. It is, of course, possible, per- 
haps we may say very probable, that on the planets 
of other solar systems the organic complex may 
occur as it does on our own; but this, if true, in 
nowise diminishes its infinitesimal relation to the 
masses of matter which have never known and can 
never be lifted to the organic state. 



ORGANIC LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 103 

To complete our view we should note the fact 
that the spatial relations of organic life are as lim- 
ited as are all the others. From the bottom of the 
deepest seas to the highest points under the equator 
to which life can extend is about eight miles. 
"When compared with the measurements of our solar 
system alone this is of no more than microscopic 
value. Thus, by all the material or visible stand- 
ards that we can apply, organic life appears to be of 
the slightest conceivable value. It is but an atom 
in the mass of the solar system; it occupies but a 
moment in its duration; it has hardly a place in 
space; it is but a temporary film on one of the 
smaller planets. It can exist only in a very small 
part of the scale of temperatures through which the 
spheres pass from their first to their last state. Set 
against the visible universe it is as near to nothing 
as we can well conceive anything to be. 

At first sight, indeed for some time after it is 
grasped, this conception of the place of the living in 
the visible universe is appalling. Eeflection leads us, 
however, to a readjustment of our primitive concep- 
tions as to this matter and to the correction of cer- 
tain errors in them; when this is accomplished we 
find ourselves possessed of a larger understanding 
of the problem of existence. If this which we call 
the living were in any way essentially parted from 



104 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the rest of the universe so that it had to be sepa- 
rately measured — if, indeed, the term being were 
more than relative — then our pain would be in a way 
justified. But, so far as we can see, this state we 
call life is no more than one of the summits of vari- 
ous series of actions which go on in the visible 
realm. It bears somewhat the same relation to the 
great mass of activities that the blossom of a plant 
does to the rest of its growth. A part of our regret 
at the exceeding limitation of life is clearly due to 
the sympathetic movement of our minds which leads 
to the feeling that it is a pity to have the pleasure 
of existence limited to so small a part of the realm. 
We may correct this by the thought that there may 
be endless other means of pleasure to us unknown. 
Because we, as the summit of one of the natural 
series, approve of the peculiar mode of existence to 
which it has attained, we have no right to conclude 
that we possess the only consciousness of good. 
The presumption, if there be any of value, is rather 
that our own success, because of its materially trifling 
nature, is really less important than others which 
are won in other modes of existence. 

The view of the universe which centres all in 
man is very natural but very conceited. It un- 
doubtedly has been in certain ways advantageous 
in the past. It has served in the primitive states 



ORGANIC LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 105 

of our intellectual development to give us a meas- 
ure of confidence as to our place in the world which. 
in the early ignorance of nature would otherwise 
have been denied. Now that we see further and 
more clearly, we are prepared to rearrange our views 
as to man's station in the realm. We see that it is 
other than it at first appeared. We can no longer 
conceive our kind of life as the sole important 
product of the great field; it appears as only a small 
part of the marvellous whole. Its peculiar dignity 
lies in the fact that it has led to the intellect of 
man, to a mode of looking upon the universe which, 
so far as we can see, is unique. Whatever other 
modes of accomplishing this work there may be we 
do not know; but be they immeasurable in number, 
it in no way diminishes the place we hold. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GKOWTH OF SYMPATHY 

Our glance at the place of organic life in Nature 
has shown us that the essential feature of it is that 
in a peculiar and exceedingly rare state of matter 
individuals are developed which are capable of har- 
vesting the effects of environment in experience, 
transmitting the profit thereof, first to the heirs of 
their bodies and later to those of their minds as 
well. In other words, we have entered on the field 
where individuals arise differing in character from 
all that has gone before, in that they are educable 
and in their succession provide for a far-ranging 
develojDment of many themes unknown in the lower 
realms of being. We have now to trace in outline, 
limiting the inquiry to those features which suit 
our main purpose, the series of this on-going which 
lead to the estate of man. 

At the outset of organic development, or at least 
in the lowest creatures which are known to us, we 
106 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 107 

find the organic body in a very generalized state. 
These lowly individuals are hardly to be definitely 
classed either as plants or animals; they are living, 
and only at a later and higher stage do they become 
very clearly one or the other. Taking the most ob- 
servable of them, the Amoeba, we find that it con- 
tains in its bit of transparent, gelatinous body the 
essential motives and capacities of an organism in 
a very diffused state. It can move, feel, digest, and 
reproduce; all these functions being present, so far 
as we have learned, in every portion of its frame. 
It is fair to presume that they exist in the smallest 
bits into which it might be divided. It is, indeed, 
most likely that these properties inhere in the mole- 
cules of the protoplasm or other chemical founda- 
tion of the creature. 

It is to be noted that what we perceive in the 
way of vital powers in these, the lowest forms of life 
known to us, are probably but a very small part of 
the store of capacities which they contain. The 
indication of this is to be found in the fact that 
similar translucent or even transparent jellylike 
creatures, such as make up the communities of the 
sponges, construct elaborate devices for the support 
of their united bodies in the form of elegantly 
shaped frameworks, which have a rare beauty of pro- 
portion and architectural finish; while others, such 



108 THE INDIVIDUAL 

as the Foraminifera, inclose their bodies in cases 
which have an exceeding grace of form and propor- 
tion. We see here what we behold in the egg or 
seed of the higher organisms, that a vast store of 
experience, the lessons learned by innumerable gen- 
erations, may be garnered in a substance which ap- 
pears to be simple, and is evidently without any 
such complication of structure as we are accustomed 
to associate with elaborate organic work. 

The point last noted concerning the apparent 
simplicity yet real complication of the lower or- 
ganic bodies, and their equivalents in the germs of 
the higher species, deserves particular attention, as 
it may serve to correct an egregious error into which 
all of us, even the well-trained naturalists, are prone 
to fall. Francis Bacon, in his admirable account 
of the many idols or prejudices which men are apt 
to worship, failed to note this of pseudo-simplicity. 
Yet it is one of the most hindering of all those 
which beset the path of the inquirer. We see, for 
instance, that the air before our eyes is transparent; 
we can not, much as we know of its constitution, 
avoid the impression that it is perfectly simple, a 
kind of nothingness. Yet we know that it is a vast 
entanglement of materials, actions, and adjustments 
i — a complex which learning will surely never com- 
pletely solve. So it is with all the regions whereunto 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 109 

our sight penetrates: we feel that we see completely, 
though every step of our inquiry tells us that we do 
not really do so. 

It is well at this place to force on our attention 
the fact that the capacity of the organic body to 
gather into an inconceivably small quantity of mat- 
ter a practically infinite store of inheritances is ap- 
parently unlimited. Into the unweighably minute 
germ which originates a creature there is laid away 
a body of traditions which, when unfolded by 
growth, exhibits the result of the experience of all 
the generations, perhaps hundreds of millions in 
number, that have gone before. This education in 
the art of handing on the results of the previous 
life is the first and most fundamental accomplish- 
ment of the organic realm, for on it depends all the 
other gains that have been made. 

The ability to transmit the qualities of the body 
to the successor is one that may possibly have be- 
come in the course of time the subject of natural 
selection, and been thus modified and affirmed in 
the measure in which we now find it. It is, how- 
ever, not at all likely that it could have been in- 
stituted in this manner at first. It is most reason- 
able to suppose that it is a primal characteristic or 
motive of the organic body which has been devel- 
oped by the survival of the fittest. It is evident 



110 THE INDIVIDUAL 

that those species which most effectively propagated 
and which tended to hand down their gains to 
their descendants would have an advantage in the 
struggle for existence. The profit thus attained 
would be won on certain lines of evolution the na- 
ture of which we readily discern. In the young of 
plants and animals alike the means whereby the 
creatures may obtain food is a matter of foremost 
importance; next to that, the provisions for avoid- 
ing danger. These needs are of fundamental impor- 
tance for the reason that they are essential to the life 
of the individual. After them comes the means of 
reproduction, relating not only to the mere increase 
in numbers, but to the provision for the care of the 
offspring. These essentials of organic forms are 
common to all kinds. They are the product of the 
evident relations to environment of the two great 
kingdoms of plants and animals into which living 
beings above the lowest are distinctly divided. It 
is characteristic of the plant realm that it attains in 
no case to intelligence. In every other important 
physiological regard the individuals contained with- 
in it are like those of the higher animal series. 

The fact that the animal series turns toward in- 
telligence, though at first that turning is very in- 
distinct, is of great importance in determining the 
shapes of their bodies. The needs of a frame which 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY HI 

is to be the habitation of an intelligence and under 
the control of a will are quite other than those 
which may serve the more limited functions of an 
unintelligent creature, such as a plant. In the ani- 
mal we normally find that the main lines of its 
structure mark the adaptation of its parts to the 
necessities of the mind. The lower forms, such as 
the Protozoa and the sponges, do not exhibit this 
accommodation to the requirements of the mental 
parts, but, as we rise in the scale, the adaptation of 
the body for this purpose becomes more and more 
evident. 

A general need of the animal form, except those 
grouped in organic communities, is that it shall be 
free to move. This is in marked contrast with the 
plants where fixity is advantageous. The difference 
in part arises from the essential difference in the 
source of food. The plant can obtain its nutriment 
directly from the mineral kingdom, from the solu- 
ble, earthy matter in the soil, or from the waters of 
the sea; therefore for it the fixed station is advan- 
tageous. The animals, on the other hand, are de- 
nied all direct access to the mineral world. They 
have to feed on plants or on other animals who, di- 
rectly or indirectly, have obtained their organic mat- 
ter from vegetation. Hence solitary animals usu- 
ally have to be mobile in order that they may seek 



112 THE INDIVIDUAL 

their subsistence. It is, it may be remarked, quite 
possible that the parting of the two great streams of 
life, that which has flowed on to the higher plants 
and that which has led to man, may have been due 
to the simple fact that certain of the primitive 
forms found their way to the habit of feeding on 
the products of the lowlier life and lost that of 
depending on the inorganic sources of subsistence. 
As soon as this habit of what we may term second- 
ary feeding was established, motion became, as we 
see, a very desirable feature. 

It is perhaps well to call attention to the fact 
that there are very many species of animals in the 
lower parts of the invertebrate groups which have 
a habit of body as fixed as that of the plants. All 
these creatures are so placed as regards the currents 
of the water in which they live that their food is 
brought to them by the motion of the fluid. The 
greater number of these sedentary species have de- 
veloped a method of uniting their bodies, as in the 
polyps, so that many individuals form one or- 
ganic community. It is noteworthy that in all 
these attached forms, single or compound, we have 
a tendency to shapes which distinctly recall those 
of plants. To the earlier naturalists many of them 
appeared so like plants that they were given 
the name of zoophytes, to indicate that their re- 



THE GROWTH OP SYMPATHY 113 

lations were with. both, the plant and animal king- 
doms. 

As the movements of animals of the lowest types 
are unguided by any clear perceptions, they have no 
definite direction. In the Amceba, and generally in 
the Protozoa, there appears to be no distinct trace 
of a definite will. The direction of motion is de- 
termined by the side from which the stimulus lead- 
ing to it may come. But as sense organs are ac- 
quired and means of locomotion are perfected, the 
body rapidly develops an axis of motion. The 
mechanical conditions require that whatever the or- 
gans of propulsion there may be shall be arranged 
on either side of the axis; that the head, with the 
anterior extremity of the alimentary canal, be placed 
at the anterior end of this axis; and that there be a 
definite lower and upper side to the structure. We 
are so accustomed to take our impression of what 
constitutes an animal from our experience with our 
own bodies and with those of the higher forms of 
the vertebrates, that we accept those features as 
matters of course. It is difficult to conceive how 
slowly, by age-long struggles, they have been de- 
veloped. In certain groups, as in the radiated ani- 
mals, where the body, as in the starfish and the sea 
urchin, is made up of similar sets of parts, arranged 
as in a plant about a vertical axis, the creatures evi- 



114 THE INDIVIDUAL 

dently strive to twist the body into a shape which 
will permit the development of an axis of motion 
so that they may adopt a definite direction of move- 
ment, thereby securing some of the advantages 
which the more fortunately conditioned types enjoy. 
As the animal body advances from its lower 
estates its gain is marked and in good measure 
effected by the progressive allotment of the several 
kinds of work to particular parts, each contrived 
for a special duty. The result of this is a number 
of systems, organs, and limbs which do no more kinds 
of work than before, though they do the tasks more 
perfectly than was done in the body of the Amoeba. 
Of these systematic divisions of the frame the most 
important, for it is the key to the growth of all 
the rest, is the nervous system. As this part slowly 
becomes developed it affords with each advance a 
better opportunity for the creatures to act in refer- 
ence to the stimulus of their environment. As the 
sense organs, those of which sight and hearing be- 
come more and more specialized, the co-operating in- 
telligence, at first a slight reflex action which hardly 
deserves the name, rises in its grade until we see 
that there is a definite will which expresses itself 
in purposeful action. At this stage in -the develop- 
ment the animal is no longer a mere passive recipi- 
ent of what the environment may send; it goes 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 115 

forth to its surroundings. It enters on the wide 
field of wilful activities. It becomes in a fuller 
sense alive. We shall not undertake to trace even 
in the merest outline the far-ranging, the practically 
infinite experiments and devices which are made to 
improve the qualities of the animal body which 
serve to fit it to be the suitable habitation for an 
intelligence. To tell the story in the briefest man- 
ner would be a great task, one for which full knowl- 
edge is not yet at hand. It is, however, necessary 
for us to consider certain peculiar features of this 
development which have led to the creation of the 
most important qualities of the vertebrate, and espe- 
cially the human mind, as compared with that of 
the lower invertebrate forms. 

First, let us observe that in all the animals be- 
low the vertebrate — i. e., the backboned type — there 
is but one nervous system, which has to do all 
the work of receiving information from the environ- 
ment as well as that which is connected with the 
internal economy of the creature. In this condi- 
tion the actions of the animal appear to be guided 
by a kind of habit which we term instinct — an intel- 
lectual process concerning which much has been 
written, but little is really known. This primitive 
nervous system of the invertebrates is probably 

the equivalent, perhaps the predecessor, of the great 
9 



116 THE INDIVIDUAL 

sympathetic system in the vertebrates — that which 
controls the actions of the several organs and in 
large measure acts as a bureau of internal affairs. 
It may be, in part, the seat of the emotions, but it 
clearly has no share in the intellectual life. When 
we come to the vertebrates we find a striking inno- 
vation in this part of the body in that a new nervous 
tract is developed, that of the spinal cord, and in 
time its enlarged anterior part, the brain. As a 
consequence of this addition we have a better 
chance for the development of the intellectual life. 
The brain and spinal cord, though they have much 
to do with the control of the body, sharing that 
task with the great sympathetic system, are mainly 
concerned with sensations derived from the environ- 
ment and actions that relate thereto. The brain 
being in close connection with the organs of sense 
becomes the seat of the rational powers, while the 
spinal cord is allotted, in large part, to the reflex or 
automatic actions which relate to the sensations. 
The most important result of these additions is the 
brain, for on it rests all the possibilities of higher 
development which have been elaborated in the ver- 
tebrate series. The creation of this part gave the 
body what may be termed a third nervous system, 
for it is nearly as distinct in character and func- 
tions from the spinal cord as that is from the great 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 117 

sympathetic combination of ganglia and nerves. It 
is this exceeding gain in the apparatus of sensation, 
action, and intelligence which sets the backboned 
animals so apart from the lower types of the animal 
kingdom rather than the mere possession of an in- 
ternal bony skeleton. The essential characteristic 
of the group is that it has a far greater provision for 
intellectual work in relation to environment than 
any of the lower forms of life. 

Along with the ample development of the in- 
ternal mechanism of intelligence which character- 
izes the vertebrates, we find a curious and important 
limitation in the machinery by which the behests 
of the rational will can be executed. In the higher 
articulates — the crabs, lobsters, and especially the 
insects — we note that the plan on which the body 
is built provides a great array of limbs and other 
parts which are readily shaped so that they may do 
whatever the will demands in the way of service. 
As is well known, these creatures are made up of 
many similar sets of parts, arranged in a train along 
the longitudinal axis. Each of these segments has 
usually one or more pairs of limblike appendages 
which can be turned to varied uses. The evident 
advantages of these structures is increased by the 
fact that the skeleton of the animal is essentially 
external, while that of the vertebrate is internal. 



118 THE INDIVIDUAL 

The result is that the limbs of the articulates are 
covered by a hard coating which can be modified to 
make jaws, paddles, legs, stings, feelers, or whatever 
else is required in the way of tools to serve the 
needs of the will. 

Out of the system of the external skeleton as we 
see it in the insects there comes an admirable suc- 
cess in varied action. The nervous processes are 
so directed that they have but to set the mechanical 
appliances to work in order to attain the profitable 
end. The result is that while the will which guides 
the actions of the insects and other mechanically 
perfect invertebrates may, and indeed generally 
does, attain a high order of development, the rational 
quality is hardly to be found there. The reader may 
understand this matter the better if he will consider 
what effect working with a tool exactly suited to 
the need has on his mental action. Let us take an 
example such as is afforded by the instruments of 
habitual action: the pen, the bat, the oar, or the 
foil. Let us suppose a novice in fencing to set 
about the acquisition of that manual art. His first 
acts have to be guided by rationally determined 
movements. He must cognize and control in a 
thoughtful way all that he does; but as with prac- 
tice he gains mastery, a kind of instinctive intelli- 
gence takes the place of the mental action so that 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 119 

he makes his movements with no consciousness of 
them, or at most he knows what he has done after 
the doing of it. In fact, he is not a master of his 
art until his acts are what we may term automatic. 
Let us fancy that all the necessary actions of our 
body, those concerned with the environment as well 
as those of the internal economy, were so related to 
inherited structures that all the work of the will 
should be done in the manner of the skilled fencer; 
that the tools of every trade were, as with the 
insects, bodily parts, and that with them came an 
inherited capacity for their use such as guides the 
infant's lips when it is placed at the mother's breasts; 
we clearly see that while the will would remain ac- 
tive and perhaps in its exercises give pleasure, such 
as we receive from the automatic activity of our 
sports, there would be no necessary culture of the 
higher intellectual faculties from that activity. 
Men would with such exercise become instinctive 
creatures, as they in a measure do in certain occu- 
pations where the will operates without conscious 
thought connected. It fortunately happens that in 
such routine men think of other things than their 
tasks, while they are guided in them by a kind of 
muscular memory. But if all their actions had been 
of the insect type, they would probably not be above 
these creatures in their mental condition. They, 



120 THE INDIVIDUAL 

too, would work instinctively. Let us consider what 
has served to set the vertebrates on the plane of 
higher rational action. 

We have noted that the articulate skeleton is, in 
effect, external, and that by affording varied ap- 
pendages in large number it offers to selective ac- 
tion a great array of instruments which can be 
turned to any required use. It is otherwise with 
the vertebrates; in their skeletal system the frame- 
work began as the support and guard of the new- 
made spinal cord, as a long beam in the central 
part of the body, extending from the head to the 
tail. Early in its history this beam became jointed; 
on the outside of the body two pairs, and no more, 
of limbs were developed which at first appeared as 
fins with bony supports. In the course of events 
these limbs and their internal parts became more 
or less attached to the spinal column, so that they 
obtained a firm support; they developed externally 
with bones inside the muscles, and not with the 
hard parts outside of them, as in the articulates. 
At the end of each limb in the higher forms there 
were at first a number of digits — i. e., fingers and 
toes — the number quickly becoming established nor- 
mally at five. These, like the other bones of the 
limb, were jointed so that a certain — at first limited 
— amount of movement of one joint or the other was 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 121 

possible. At the end of each digit a nail was left 
as the last monument of the ancient scaly covering. 
In addition to the four limbs the vertebrate was, 
by the processes of its development, provided with 
jaws, and in the mammals with lips, so that the 
head could grasp objects, and when it became well 
jointed by means of a flexible neck, it afforded a 
fifth functionally limblike structure. To this small 
array of instruments of the will there should be 
added certain occasionally specialized teeth, such as 
the tusks of the elephant and the horns which occur 
in certain species of vertebrates, as also the tail 
which occasionally becomes the instrument of the 
will, serving as in the fishes for swimming or, in 
other higher forms, for various subordinated uses. 

Comparing as best we can the mechanical pro- 
cesses for the activities of the backboned animals 
with those of the articulate animals, we find that in 
number they may in general be rated as one in the 
higher to about ten in the lower forms. As regards 
their efficiency, the difference is yet greater; the 
appendages in the insects are uniformly far more 
especially adapted to the needs they are shaped to 
serve than are those of the vertebrates. In this 
last-named series the limbs, except in a few cases, 
such as the wings of bats and birds, are not greatly 
specialized for their particular uses as are those of 



122 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the higher invertebrates, where there is need of 
highly mechanical action. If we compare a man 
and a bee, forms which may be taken as types of 
very specialized work in the two great series, we 
find in the lesser creature that the structure is ex- 
ceedingly well adapted to the varied work it has 
to do. The wings are most effective instruments 
for rapid and well-directed movement. There are 
three pairs of well- jointed, nimble legs, antennae 
provided with a very delicate sense of touch, mandi- 
bles of remarkably effective nature, and a sting 
which is an admirable instrument of attack. In the 
greater animal there is but one pair of instruments 
of progression, the legs, which give but little speed, 
the other pair of limbs being devoted to the special 
uses of the will. For the execution of his intellec- 
tual purposes the arms and hands are, except when 
they are provided with artificial tools, of little serv- 
ice save in climbing, for which purpose they have 
been somewhat specially modified. As for the hand 
itself it is, when unarmed, a very feeble instrument. 
It can not strike a blow to be compared with the 
sting of a bee in effectiveness, size being taken into 
account. Much has been said in praise of the 
structure of the hand, but it is in itself of little 
value for any particular organic purpose except in 
cleaning the body, until the creature it serves came 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 123 

to the state where it began to use at first sticks and 
stones, and later the more elaborate utensils of the 
various arts. Then it came to serve, as no other 
appendage does, as a universal tool-holder, essen- 
tially like the chucks of lathes which are so ar- 
ranged that they may clutch any form of cutting 
instrument and guide it in its work. 

However far we might extend the comparison of 
the articulate and vertebrate types of animals, we 
should only re-enforce the statement that the later 
and higher group of vertebrates is very inferior to 
the lower invertebrates in the range and scope of 
the parts which serve the purposes of the will. Not 
only are the serviceable appendages much fewer, but 
they are relatively inferior in capacity to meet par- 
ticular needs. As an instance of that, we may note 
the limited extent to which the hand has varied in 
all the vast time since it took its existing general 
form in the lower Mammalia. The greatest change 
which has come to the extremities of land verte- 
brates has consisted in the reduction in the number 
of digits from the primitive number of five to two 
in the cloven-footed forms, or to one in those with 
the solid hoof; and in the specialization of the an- 
terior pair of limbs for flight, as in the birds and 
bats. All this shows us that the conditions of an 
internal skeleton are such as to limit the number of 



124 THE INDIVIDUAL 

limbs and to restrict their variations. The deep- 
lying, bony framework is not readily influenced by 
any needs. It, in common with the other internal 
parts, varies but little, and the variations that occur 
offer no such profitable features to selection as the 
accidents of the hard external skeleton of the 
insects and other articulates afford. Thus it comes 
about that while the vertebrates are provided with 
a very much better nervous apparatus for the 
use of the will and the other qualities of the intelli- 
gence, they are curiously limited in the means for 
reacting on the environment. 

The general effect of the above-noted limitation 
in the instruments of the will that are provided for 
the service of the vertebrate body is to institute 
another and higher type of mental activity than that 
found in the lower invertebrate field. As we have 
already noted, the instinctive nature of the articu- 
late mind — the state in which the acts done in re- 
sponse to nervous stimulation are performed by par- 
ticular instruments in a way which has been termed 
" automatic." It is evident that such instinctive 
action is greatly favoured by the perfect adaptation 
of the appendages to particular needs. It is admi- 
rably otherwise in the vertebrates, because with a 
better nervous basis for the working of the mind 
they have to accomplish the behests of the will with 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 125 

inferior means. The result is that they are forced 
into rational rather than into instinctive methods 
of action. The use of the reason is fostered by the 
limitations set upon all their endeavours, so that 
gradually the intelligence enters on the slow ascent 
toward the rational quality we have in man. In 
other words, out of this apparently unhappy limita- 
tion of the appendages in the backboned animals 
comes, in the end, that quality of mind which, even 
more than their eminent peculiarities of structure, 
separates them from the lower invertebrate life. 

It must not be supposed that the passage from 
the ancient instinctive type of mind to that of ra- 
tional quality which we find in man was suddenly 
effected; in fact, the lower species of vertebrates 
appear in this respect at first sight to present no 
distinct difference in quality as compared with the 
insects. The popular notion is that both these 
groups of minds work in the same way; but no 
observer is likely to give attention to the compara- 
tive psychology of vertebrates and articulates with- 
out noting in all the members of the two groups 
certain essential differences in action which denote a 
clear demarcation between their mental processes. 
In the lower forms all action runs in grooves; it is 
unvaried to a degree which is rarely or never found 
among the vertebrates. An insect's will leads it to 



126 THE INDIVIDUAL 

repeat the same movements under similar conditions 
with mechanical reiteration. They appear to learn 
little or nothing from individual experience; while 
the vertebrate of even the lower classes on close 
study usually shows that the lesson of the conditions 
is in some measure read. 

The mechanical modes of action of the .articulate 
may be in some part due to the very large amount of 
energy, in proportion to their weight, which their 
nervous system supplies. The more vigorous in- 
sects have a muscular power many times as great, 
in proportion to their bulk or weight, than the 
strongest vertebrates can apply. This power is 
likely to force the development of the insistent, un- 
reasoning will, which is the conspicuous feature in 
the activities of the group. A part of the difference 
in the quality of mind of the two groups may be 
due to the fact that vertebrates have, on the whole, 
better organs of sense, in so far as their eyes and 
ears evidently afford them a broader foundation for 
knowledge as to the world about them. Their eyes 
doubtless see better than those of insects, for those 
of the articulates generally form more definite im- 
ages of objects at a distance. It is not well known 
what is the range of insect vision or just how far 
it yields impressions like those we receive. But 
their vision is evidently very limited as compared 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 127 

with, that of the true lens eye. So, too, with hear- 
ing, though perhaps in a less degree. The verte- 
brate catches sounds that are farther away and 
probably of a wider range in scale; insects attend 
to few noises of any kind. It is doubtful if their 
hearing is much better than their sight. The 
only senses in which they apparently exceed the 
vertebrate are those of touch and of smell. Those 
species which possess long antennas appear gener- 
ally to be able to determine in a very quick man- 
ner the difference between objects, even where the 
discrimination appears difficult, by a few passes 
of these sensitive feelers. In this way an ant seems 
to find whether another of his species is a member 
of his colony or no. It is in the sense of smell that 
we find the most evident advantage of the insects 
over the vertebrates. Thus, a female of Ocneria dis- 
par, or gipsy moth, will, by some odour insensible to 
us, attract males of the species from a distance of 
about a mile away. 

For our main purpose these differences between 
the highest of the invertebrates and the species of 
the backboned group are important, for they show 
us something of the basis on which, the higher grade 
of animal life is founded — the life which deals with 
the world, not in the direct reflex way, but by the 
rational method by bringing experiences into critical 



128 THE INDIVIDUAL 

accord. This process which has led to the intellect 
of man was evidently begun in the lower stages of 
the vertebrate type, and has slowly accumulated its 
possibilities until at length they took shape in the 
intelligence of men. Moreover, this quality of 
mind which has developed in the vertebrate has 
favoured the fullest development of the motives of 
sympathy — those motives which have been the most 
important of all in bringing about the evils and bene- 
fits due to death. 

In the mechanical or instinctive method of the 
mind which we note in the invertebrates, we find 
innumerable marks of sympathetic action of a low 
grade, for a host of these species show varied methods 
of co-operative work. In those which form colo- 
nies, after the manner of the ants and bees, the 
individuals of the society will protect one another, 
or at least they will assail the intruder; but of any 
feeling for the suffering of the fellow-being there 
is no distinct evidence. There are, it is true, many 
recorded instances where ants have striven to pull 
out a comrade who had become entangled in some 
sticky substance, but it is not clear that this be- 
haviour can be accounted for by any sense of sym- 
pathy with the sufferer. While there may be some 
trace of this motive in the lower realm of life, it is 
tolerably clear that it does not take on any definite 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 129 

form or play any distinct part in the activities of 
the creatures below the level of the vertebrates. 

In the lower vertebrates we find little other 
mark of the sympathetic motives than is shown by 
the care of the offspring and the existence, in many 
species, of the herding habit. Still, even among the 
fishes and reptiles we observe that individuals may 
be domesticated, or, at least, wonted to contact with a 
particular person, which is an advance on anything 
we find among the insects except possibly in the case 
of the bees, where the members of a hive may be- 
come in a measure accustomed to their keeper. It 
is when we attain to the level of the birds that we 
first discover distinct evidence of the sympathetic 
motive. In these creatures the impulse is prevail- 
ingly strong, stronger perhaps than in any other, 
save in man. It is shown, not only in a general 
way, by the keen interest which they take in the 
doings of their fellows, in their wide range of sym- 
pathetic cries which express the emotion in terms 
that appeal to our own, but by a host of well- 
observed instances of the deep and abiding affection 
existing between sexual mates. As is well known, 
some of the species are monogamic to a degree un- 
known in any other animals, not excepting our own 
kind. 

Among the birds, as elsewhere, the enlarged 



130 THE INDIVIDUAL 

sympathetic motive has its origin in the family, 
which, in turn, rests on the nesting and incubating 
habits and on the extended care of the brood after 
it is hatched. The birds have invented a novel 
means of giving their young a measure of help be- 
yond that which is afforded by a large store of nutri- 
ment lodged in the egg. Their feathers and the 
high temperature of their blood together make it 
possible, by the application of the body of the par- 
ent to the eggs, at once to hasten their develop- 
ment and to spare for other uses a considerable 
amount of the food stored in the shells which would 
otherwise be expended in keeping up the heat of 
the embryo. The importance of this last-noted aid 
has been overlooked, but it is noteworthy. 

The work of nest building, commonly a joint 
task of both parents where the nest is a consider- 
able structure; the service of the male in defend- 
ing the nest, and his often associated labour in feed- 
ing the young; the care of the brood before it is 
ready for independent life — all serve admirably well 
to awaken an interest in the comrades of the flock 
or even of the fellows 'of the species. Probably to 
these conditions is due the high measure of sympa- 
thetic development which has taken place in this 
group. There, even more than in the mammals be- 
low man, do we find the individuals keenly sensitive 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 131 

to the sufferings of their kind; ready with warning 
notes to announce danger; willing in cases to meet 
it in order to protect their associates from peril. 

It is interesting to observe that the development 
of the sympathetic motive beyond the mere traces of 
it which appear in the fishes and reptiles, and per- 
haps in the amphibians, occurs in the group where 
we first find an extended use of the will. Many of 
the lower vertebrates have vocal calls, apparently, in 
all cases, of an essentially sexual nature. Among 
the birds these sounds take in a wide range, only a 
few of them being connected with the sexual motive. 
Thus, among our cocks and hens there are a score or 
more of distinct notes or vocal signs which relate 
to their social intercourse. Other species appear 
to be even richer in these denotents of sympathetic 
states of mind. No such wide range of expression 
exists among the mammals until we attain to near 
the summit of the series where, in the apes, that 
range is large — yet hardly as great as among the 
birds. 

The mammalian series shows us much the same 

process in the evolution of the sympathies that we 

find in the birds. In the mammals, however, there 

is lacking the conditions of the nest which make 

the family of the birds a most effective basis for 

sympathetic culture. Although some of the suck- 
10 



132 THE INDIVIDUAL 

giving animals are in a way solitary, all, save a 
few of the species, have either the habit of herding 
or that of the permanent family. Even the great 
beasts of prey, which have to range over a large 
area for their subsistence, usually have mates and 
young to which they day by day return. Thus, 
nearly as much as the birds, the mammals have the 
habit of association. They display that need of 
contact with the fellows of their species which is a 
mark of the higher life. 

The birds and mammals alike exhibit, though in 
diverse measures, a token of sympathy which is pe- 
culiar to the higher vertebrates. They both are dis- 
tinctly sportive, given to gambols which are clearly 
like those which we see in children and which are 
organized in the dance. These antics of the mam- 
mals and birds are almost always social perform- 
ances. They apparently indicate that the creature 
recognises the companionship of its kindred and has 
them in mind in its enjoyment. Nothing of this na- 
ture is visible in the lower realms of life. We find 
there abundant evidence of the recognition of the 
fellow-member of the colony or the species in the 
sexual relations, in mutual labour or in combats, but 
of sportive gambols, in the form so general if not 
universal in the higher vertebrates, we discern 
nothing. 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 133 

As is the case with all the other motives of the 
higher sort, that of sympathy, though exhibited 
in the lower grades of life, commonly undergoes a 
rapid development when we attain to the grade of 
man. It is true that in the lowest savages the range 
and the strength of the sympathetic movements are 
not clearly greater than they are among many of the 
birds and some of the higher mammals. But among 
men, even of the lowest estate, the existence of or- 
dered speech, which enables them to go much fur- 
ther in the work of transmitting ideas than is pos- 
sible when the communication is limited to mere 
cries, makes a vast provision for the development of 
associated understandings and of the sympathy that 
goes therewith. While the expression of this mo- 
tive is limited to sounds conveying only general 
ideas, such as those of fear, joy, or satisfaction, 
though the sense of companionship is fostered, there 
is small chance that it will result in effective mutual 
help. Speech, even in its lowest forms, enables the 
creature to present itself to its kindred in a way 
that is likely not only to assure the sympathies but 
to give direction to their action. We observe a 
familiar instance of this in the growth of a child. 
In its infancy it has no resource wherewith to seek 
aid except its wail. This is very moving to the 
emotions of the hearers, but tells little save the 



134 THE INDIVIDUAL 

distress of the sufferer. When speech is gained the 
creature is in a very much better position to com- 
mand the effective aid of its elders. Thus, while 
language may not directly, or at least immediately, 
add much to the strength of the sympathetic mo- 
tive, it greatly increases the effective value of this 
bond of union between the members of any society. 

When, with the help of speech, the ancient sym- 
pathetic emotions begin their higher development in 
man, we find almost at once a great extension made 
in the basis of the mutual understandings and sym- 
pathies. The lower forms base their affection for 
one another on the attachment of parent and child, 
or on the habits of the herd which recognises all of 
the association as fellows and may yield obedience 
to a leader. Very early in human society there 
arose other interests to extend the range of sym- 
pathy. The religious motive is among the first and 
most distinctively human of these new develop- 
ments. It affords a peculiar bond, one of very great 
power, as it brings the ancient and deeply founded 
instinct of fear into action and unites it with other 
movements of the mind, so that the result is a keen- 
er sense of comradeship. 

Along with religion we may class organized 
war as an aid to the excitement of sympathy. There 
was, of course, unending fighting among the lower 



THE GROWTH OP SYMPATHY 135 

animals, but little trace of common understanding or 
of fellowship in its deeds. With man this exercise 
becomes, by means of speech, so far ordered that 
there is a sense of associated endeavour in such 
actions. Among the primitive peoples this sense 
of mutual work in war was undoubtedly "a potent 
agent in bringing men to a strong sense of kinship. 
Its value was of the lowest grade in the series in 
which it belongs, for, while it developed affection 
for the fellows of the host, it tended then, as now, 
to limit the range of sympathies. Like many an- 
other feature of the primitive estate of man — as, for 
instance, slavery — it had its time, has served its pur- 
pose as a part of the scaffolding used in the con- 
struction of society, and now is fitted to pass away. 
The possession and the sense of property, 
both essentially features of human society, have in 
certain ways been very effective in promoting the 
development of sympathy, though, like war, it has 
had at the same time a limiting effect on the range 
of the emotion. The first effect of the property 
sense is, of course, hedonistic, purely selfish; but, 
more than any other influence, it has in a second- 
ary way served to create a sense of the rights of 
others, to make men put themselves in the place of 
the neighbour. The very corner stone of human 
society is an understanding of the privileges of the 



136 THE INDIVIDUAL 

fellow-creature. It is clear that this sense has come 
forth from the earliest of them- — i. e., the right of 
each man to his own possessions. In such ways as 
these the conception of the kindred man, as like one's 
self, has been greatly fostered by the development of 
social institutions. It may be truly said that these 
institutions have themselves been made possible by 
sympathy, for they were founded on so much of it 
as came to man from his lower kindred. But it is, 
nevertheless, certain that they have been potent 
agencies in extending and strengthening the bond 
which unites the individuals of a society in one 
whole. 

It is hardly too much to say that the rational- 
izing of the sympathies which has insensibly come 
about among men has given those motives a differ- 
ent path of advance from that found in the lower 
stages of their development. Among the brutes 
they could be no more than emotions; while they 
may remain in this primal state among men, the 
obvious tendency is for them to be informed by 
the intelligence and to rise to higher planes of 
motive and action. In fact, the culture of the in- 
dividual man, or that of the society of which he 
forms a part, may fairly be measured by the extent 
to which this process has gone on. So far as the 
ancient motives of affection for the mate, the off- 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 137 

spring, and the kind have qualified, and have been 
qualified by the understanding, the life, whether in- 
dividual or social, is lifted in the scale of being. 

It is a peculiar quality of the sympathy with a 
fellow-being that it goes directly counter to self- 
interest. From the point of view of individual prof- 
it, hedonism is the fit state for a creature. It 
should get every advantage for itself and extermi- 
nate every other being which interferes with its im- 
mediate interests. So far as sympathy demands a 
share of nervous energy, even in mere feeling it is 
personally unprofitable. If it leads to acts of self- 
sacrifice it goes directly against the principle of the 
survival of the fittest. There is no doubt that the 
care of offspring aids in the maintenance and exten- 
sion of kind, and that the willingness to fight 
for the tribe helps the chances of all its members, 
and so may be profitable to the gens and the species. 
But where the sympathetic motive, as in the higher- 
natured men, goes forth to all the life about it, we 
can not explain the extension by selective processes. 
It is in the immediate sense quite unprofitable; it 
takes from the giver and can not be imagined as 
helping the species or the race in a sufficient meas- 
ure to add to its chances of dominance. But the 
process of expansion of the sympathies has gone on 
apace among men. To the inherited interest in the 



138 THE INDIVIDUAL 

kind there was at first added an interest in the unseen 
realm. This at the beginning of religion was little 
more than fear, but as the plane of the thought rose 
it became truly sympathetic, until in the higher 
minds the love of the good alone is even as strong 
as that for the child or the mate. In yet more ad- 
vanced stages of this wonderful development the 
affections extends beyond the original limitations 
of the state or race to include all mankind, and yet 
further to all living beings. In the highest spirits 
who attain to the ideal goal of this advance the 
emotion goes forth to the wider realm of Nature, all 
things having a place in the garner of the enlarged 
sympathetic intelligence, for in them the spirit of 
love informs all their thoughts and is awakened by 
all their perceptions. 

The reader has doubtless noticed that no attempt 
has been made to show what is the effect of the long 
course of events, which has led to the union of the 
sympathies and the intelligence, on the problem 
of death. The meaning of the lesson is most likely 
plain to him; it may be briefly told. The first 
and most immediately important influence of the 
sympathetic motive is to do for the mental life 
what the egg, the lacteal system, and the placenta 
have, in a measure, done for the physical, by unit- 
ing all the members of a society in such a manner 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 139 

that the isolation of the individual is, to a great 
extent, overcome. This is, in part, accomplished 
by the helpful relations that grow out of sym- 
pathy, by the sense that everywhere about us there 
are others like ourselves who feel for and with 
us. There is an evident distress which makes most 
isolated animals miserable when they are with- 
out contact with their kind. This sense of loneli- 
ness is keener in the more sensitive man than in his 
lower kindred. In part, the gain afforded by social 
sympathy is due to the actual help, vast in amount 
which every member of a human society lends to his 
fellows. At every turn it assuages the evils of his 
separate estate: helping in his coming into the 
world, helping in the stage of activity, guarding in 
the decline and consoling in the final passage. 

Great as are the blessings of sympathy in the 
direct aid it gives in mitigating the recurrent ills 
of the individual, in its time of activity, and in that 
of death which parts it from its mates, they are of 
small account in comparison with the secondary in- 
fluences that it brings to bear on the conduct of 
the mind it controls. By going forth to others with 
all his strength the individual wins beyond himself. 
He escapes from the prison which the sense of self 
inevitably puts him into. Just so far as he sym- 
pathetically goes forth to other personalities, to his 



140 THE INDIVIDUAL 

follows of whatsoever estate, to his God or to the 
Nature about him, he is emancipated from selfhood. 
Above all, from the fear of death that dogs the 
steps of all those who live within themselves. If a 
man could but remain thus abroad from himself 
he would go from life in the true euthanasia, parted 
from himself before the separating stroke came. 

In the ideals of men, even among those of a 
primitive kind, we find that this understanding of 
the value of the sympathetic emotions has been well 
appreciated though its meaning has not been well 
conceived. To take the lowest manifestation of the 
understanding, that which is embodied in the death 
of the faithful soldier. He is always pictured as 
parting from life willingly, even joyfully, because of 
his love of his people or of his cause. Undoubted- 
ly the self-devotion born of such sympathy affords 
a cure for the worst sufferings that death brings, and 
it awakens the beholders to a sense of what self- 
sacrifice may do to elevate a man. Again, when the 
sympathetic motive is religious it may, even more 
effectively than the simpler heroic motive, separate 
the man from himself so that torture unto death is 
unable to cow the spirit. 

Although the conspicuous instances of the 
strength of the sympathetic emotions in taking 
men out of themselves are to be seen in heroic 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 141 

deaths, it is not in such events that their highest 
value is really to be found. It is in the paths of quiet 
duty in well-ordered and placid societies that the 
sympathetic sacrifices play the largest part in the 
alienation of the burdens which life brings to men. 
All real social advance consists of gain in the altru- 
istic motive. The advance might be measured, if 
there were a gauge, by the extent to which men 
dwell beyond themselves. 

The foregoing considerations have made it plain 
that the steadfast tendency of the advance in the 
organic series is toward a union of individual lives 
in such a manner that the gulf of death between 
the generations may be, if not healed, at least so 
bridged that the succeeding generation takes on 
a goodly share of the profit that the preceding 
one has won from its experience. The last and 
highest of these devices is that of human society. 
We have no need to describe this institution. Some 
of its effects on the problem of death have been al- 
ready noted. It is well, however, to consider the 
matter more closely. Experiments of the social or- 
der began in the lower realms of life. Nearly all 
animals which have any considerable measure of in- 
telligence are accustomed to dwell together. They 
need social contact for their satisfaction, often for 
their very existence. The greater number of spe- 



142 THE INDIVIDUAL 

cies which are well known show some trace of an 
order in their packs, herds, and flocks. In certain of 
them, as in the class of insects, the organization of a 
society attains a remarkable, though rigid perfection. 
In the ant colony we have an establishment which 
may endure for ages, each creature giving his mite 
to the activity of the state of which he is a part. In 
its formal way, measured by the stability of the or- 
ganization, these ant colonies surpass any results 
which have been attained by men, for they may, so 
perfect is the balance of their order, last for geo- 
logic periods. They have, however, the peculiar 
mechanical or automatic quality that belongs to all 
the operations of the insect mind. 

Human societies depend on the combination of 
the sympathies and the deliberately contriving in- 
telligence which may have been attained by the 
vertebrates alone. From a certain point of view, 
which commands but a small part of the field, they 
appear to be the result of the hedonistic motives. So 
our descriptions of the social order, which have un- 
happily coloured the conception of it, commonly take 
account only of what goes on under the control 
of the impulses which lead men to seek to acquire 
wealth. While this seeking is one of the most 
ardent features in the social activities, it is a mis- 
take to suppose that the gainful motives are those 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 143 

which are most effective in shaping the aggregates 
of man. If we could analyze the impulses which 
lead them to the unending toil and care involved in 
the pursuit of wealth, we should most likely find 
that the purely selfish were much the least part of 
the whole. Very little of the vast aggregate of la- 
hour in our industrial societies has for its aim the 
gratification of the purely individual desires of the 
workers. The greater part of the gainful impulse 
arises from the nobler motive of providing for 
the present and future needs and comforts of others 
who may he dependent on the labour. Much of it 
comes from a desire to win a favourable opinion 
from others. In fact, a society such as our own ex- 
ists because its members are in large measure un- 
selfish, because the outgoing of the sympathies has 
already brought men far into the realm of self-devo- 
tion, has released them in part from the ancient 
evils of isolated individuality. 

Thus, although one effect of the higher sensitive 
life of our civilization has been to enhance the woe 
of death by making existence the richer and men 
more keenly sensible of its charms, there is a con- 
trasted and counterbalancing influence in the ex- 
tension of the spirit of self-devotion which leads 
them not alone to forget themselves and their fate, 
but to merge their interests in their kind. It is 



14:4c THE INDIVIDUAL 

likely that the burden of the individual upon him- 
self is much less grievous in the best societies of to- 
day than it has hitherto been. That such is the 
case is pretty well shown by the tone of the litera- 
ture. The' note of despair, the cry as of the victim 
before the altar, which has so rung in the past is lit- 
tle heard now, except from those who are evidently 
weaklings or are merely acting a part. The old sel- 
fish humour appears to be giving place to a quality 
of devotion in which, while there may not be as yet 
much hope of a future, there is the calmness of 
strong men who do not feel themselves or their fate 
so keenly as the ancients did. 

One of the helpful qualities of our civilized so- 
cieties is that their institutional life in many and 
varied ways serves to give men firm ground on 
which to found their forthgoing sympathies. In 
the primitive tribe there was no more than the im- 
perfectly limited family, the gens, and such religion 
as had been developed ? to which these emotions 
could attach themselves. The development of the 
family which came with the establishment of monog- 
amy, and its ever-increasing freedom from pollu- 
tion, has made the household the ark of a new cove- 
nant among men. This gain in the home condition 
is a matter of relatively modern times. It has come 
about through the extension of the altruistic spirit. 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 145 

So, too, the modern security of the city and the state 
has afforded enduring associations very different in 
their fitness to command the affection of their mem- 
bers from the temporary and ever-menaced tribal 
organizations. Eeligions have also gained in dig- 
nity and permanence. Those who are members of 
a common faith have something to which they may 
cling with a sense of safety that earlier times 
denied. 

Not only has civilization safeguarded the ancient 
institutions of men, but it has given rise to a host 
of new establishments such as were unknown in 
the earlier forms of human associations. In every 
high-grade modern society we find a great array of 
these institutions such as do not exist in the savage 
or barbaric state of man. There are business 
houses, corporations of various kinds, all of which 
are intended to have a life beyond that of the gen- 
eration which conducts their affairs. There are so- 
cieties and clubs designed for the pleasures or pro- 
tection of their members. The churches are such 
institutions in their quality — i. e., they have the 
kind of permanence which men so hunger for as a 
corrective of their individual short lives. Last of 
all, there are the charitable and educational founda- 
tions which provide for the highest grade of altruis- 
tic devotion, which issues in well-devised work for 



146 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the help of the living or of those yet unborn. 
These institutions not only find, their shelter within 
the edifice of the commonwealth, they, in large part, 
constitute that wonderful structure. Each of them 
is like a tree in a great forest. It forces by its own 
growth the upward growing of its neighbours, so 
that they all rise together toward the sky. Beneath 
their roof men may find, a measure of peace in that 
forgetfulness of self which is the goal to which, 
unknowingly, they are striving. 

It is this saving quality of society, this gift it 
makes of institutional life, and not the mere wealth 
or physical well-being which it promotes, that gives 
it sanctity. The ancients saw in their churches 
hallowed by the relicts of saints and the presence of 
their gods the most sacred places on earth. They 
deemed them precious because they were sanctuaries 
defended from all assaults. We see, if we clearly 
discern the truth, that our societies are, or at least 
are becoming, the true and larger refuges of men. 
We see, moreover, that the master evil of the savage 
inheritances of man, that of war, does not inflict 
its worst ills in the death it brings to the youth 
and hope of the state, or in the destruction of the 
hard-won wealth of the community it ravages, but 
in the overthrow or impoverishment of its institu- 
tional life, in the lessened confidence in the safety 



THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY 14-7 

of families, of business establishments, of all the 
varied trusts and organized expectations which help 
men out of themselves. By the ancient provision 
of affection the losses of mere death may be at 
least in part healed; those which are written de- 
spair are far more indelible. It requires genefa- 
tions for downtrodden people, such as those of Italy, 
to develop a measure of confidence which may lead 
them to the brave work of constructing institutions. 
Some of them, as, for instance, those of Sicily and 
Greece, appear to have become almost incapable of 
turning their considerable abilities again to such 
use. Their minds have lost the habit of such 
deeds. They have j^erforce become perfectly con- 
tent with a narrow round of momentary actions. 

If we look upon the societies of our higher civili- 
zations as the result of a series of endeavours which 
have for their most important result the unification 
of the individual with the whole, we not only see 
the best of the good that they have attained, but we 
are directed to the fit paths of further advance. Al- 
though I propose to treat this matter in a more ex- 
tended way in the sequel, it is well to note here 
that the basis of social advance is clearly to be 
found in the development of our societies in the 
ways in which the sympathies may be enlarged. 

Spontaneously men have found this, for in all re- 
11 



148 THE INDIVIDUAL 

spects, except in the matter of formal politics, our 
societies are tending in that direction. 

As the development of the sympathetic motives 
depends upon the means by which individuals may 
communicate with one another and the interest 
that leads to such communication, the following 
chapter will be devoted to a brief consideration of 
certain expressions of mutual appreciation. 



CHAPTEK VII 

EXPRESSION OF THE INDIVIDUALITY 

Among the lower groups of individualities — those 
of the mechanical order, such as atoms, molecules, 
and spheres — the dynamic reaction is always equal 
to the corresponding action that comes from the 
environment. The same law holds good in the or- 
ganic realm: the bodies of the persons, being made 
up of lower inorganic units, react in much the 
same way as they would if they were not in a living 
body. Gradually, however, in a manner that we 
can not trace, this machinelike method of discharg- 
ing the energy which is received from without 
is in part transformed so that a portion of the im- 
pulse sent in from the environment becomes con- 
verted into intellectual work. In this psychic field 
we find, in the way mental impression tends to give 
rise to a corresponding expression, something that 
reminds us of the principle that holds in inorganic 
forms. At its simplest this is shown in the reflex 

149 



150 THE INDIVIDUAL 

action of the muscles on a particular stimulus; with. 
a more advanced stage by the attitudes of the body 
which correspond to the several emotions; in its 
fullest growth by the need of expressing those larger 
and more continuous movements of the spirit which 
give character to the individual life. 

We may easily see, by watching our own lives or 
those of others, that a man needs in some way to 
set forth his inner life in an external form. This 
is most commonly noticeable in children and among 
other unadvanced people, when it is in a satisfy- 
ing manner done by means of apparel, attitudes, or 
manners. Dress indeed is the instinctive and uni- 
versal means by which men gratify this desire for 
externalizing themselves. All feel, though in vary- 
ing measure, the satisfaction which this very human 
method of setting one's self forth affords. So, too, 
though less generally, our behaviour affords gratifi- 
cation, provided we feel that it rightly presents us 
to ourselves as well as to others. For the higher 
planes of thought we need other modes of externali- 
zation. The poet must sing, or the painter depict, 
and so through the list of deeds, not only or main- 
ly because the man will have some kind of profit 
therefrom through the attention his neighbours 
give him, but because he must in a way actualize 
himself. 



EXPRESSION OP THE INDIVIDUALITY 151 

It is an inadequate conception of human con- 
duct to suppose that all creative work is done in 
direct and sole reference to other persons and for 
the gain that may be won from their esteem. That 
motive doubtless enters for a very great value into 
the complicated equations of impulses which guide 
the lives of men. But, in my opinion, the larger part 
of their work, from their dress to their most digni- 
fied accomplishments, is primarily moved and mainly 
shaped by the ancient and instinctive need of ex- 
ternalizing the self. It is not improbable that this 
impulse is due, at least in part, to a natural desire 
for the completion of a train of thought. Those 
who are in any manner engaged in forming concep- 
tions which may be given actual shape — as ma- 
chines, houses, essays, poems, or whatever it may be 
that can be realized — know the curious relief which 
comes to the mind when the idea is brought into 
the form in which it is beheld with the outer eyes. 
Therein, indeed, is the pleasure of the creative mind 
in its work, rather than in the fame or profit that 
it may bring. 

In our systems of education far too little atten- 
tion has been devoted to the importance of expres- 
sion as a means of inducing intellectual work, espe- 
cially that of the higher order. It is fairly to be 
said that the development of any form of production 



152 THE INDIVIDUAL 

absolutely depends on the institution of the need 
and habit of externalizing concepts. Unless the 
mind becomes habituated to this process of setting 
itself forth in deeds., so that it seeks to shape its 
thought in some external form, it will inevitably 
lose whatever creative power it may have been heir 
to. Without this habit, the person may never come 
to know with what powers he may be endowed, for 
the offerings of the constructive imagination are 
but dimly presented to consciousness until the ex- 
ternal building process is begun. 

In considering the great question — in some re- 
gards the greatest we now have to face — as to the 
ways in which we may bring individual men to 
the exercise of their full powers, it is most im- 
portant to consider the part which the instinct of 
representation has had in the development of the 
mind. We see traces of this motive in the lower 
animals. It is particularly evident among the 
birds; and, in the form of gesture, it is well indi- 
cated in the nearer kinsmen of mankind, the mon- 
keys. Even the lowest men, however, show a far 
greater need of such representation than any of 
the brutes. They quickly and universally acquire 
fthe resources of dress and manner. They soon 
advance to the stage where song and the dance 
serve the need. Along with these go the develop- 



EXPRESSION OF THE INDIVIDUALITY 153 

ment of the plastic arts; and here and there literary 
invention helps the abler minds. When we consider 
these instinctive means by which men managed 
to educate and enlarge their imaginations, and 
compare that education with what our later civiliza- 
tion has brought about, we see one of the evils of 
our so-called culture. In our conditions there is 
little chance for the individual to grow by the exer- 
cise of any of his creative motives: he is restricted 
to mere imitation. This problem of the relation 
of the motive of expression to the development of 
individuality is most interesting, but it can not be 
more than mentioned here. 

The extent to which persons are moved to rep- 
resent themselves to their neighbours appears to 
differ greatly among various peoples, and even 
among the same folk in successive periods. Thus, 
among the French the motives of self-presentation 
and of appreciation appear to have been strong 
throughout their history. Among the English, how- 
ever, an originally rather retiring and unindicative 
humour was, in the Tudor reigns, gradually altered 
until their society became in the Elizabethan time 
one of the most expressive that the world has ever 
known. This is shown not only in their larger 
literature and in their action, but perhaps best in 
the letters of the men and women of that time. In 



154 THE INDIVIDUAL 

these letters, notwithstanding the euphemism that 
deforms them, the reader will find singularly vigor- 
ous and effective setting forth of individual quality. 
The people depict themselves and their neighbours in 
a wonderfully definite way, so that we may set them 
before our eyes more clearly than it is possible to do 
with those of generations nearer our own time. It 
is not improbable that the lessening of expressive- 
ness of the English people after the close of the 
Elizabethan reign was due to the extension of the 
Puritan spirit, which was in part a revolt against the 
singular individualism of the preceding time. In 
that movement the ideals of conduct, which found 
their fullest development among the Quakers, led to 
a self-contained habit that has to this day marked 
the English folk of all classes in an apparently per- 
manent manner. 

There are other instances of sudden changes in 
the manner in which men have endeavoured to pre- 
sent themselves to their fellows. Some of these, 
as in the " Storm and Stress " period of German 
literature, appear to have been essentially artificial, 
mere intellectual fashions resembling those which 
control dress or gesture. In such cases they are 
but temporary and without much value to the stu- 
dent of individuality. When, however, they are of 
a permanent nature, such as those above noted 



EXPRESSION OF THE INDIVIDUALITY 155 

among the English folk, they have great importance 
as indexes of the temper of peoples. They are very 
difficult to discern and impossible to estimate, save 
in a very general way. Yet, despite all their indefi- 
niteness, they are among the very best indications as 
to the nature and meaning of national life. 

In man the field of expression, other than that 
given by means of gesture, is limited to but a very 
small portion of the surface of the body. Only a 
part of what is commonly termed the face has any 
distinct share in depicting the emotions. The field 
is essentially confined to the area from just above 
the eyebrows to the lower part of the chin, a dis- 
tance not exceeding half a foot — the space is little 
wider than the length of a line drawn across the 
eyes — in all, perhaps not the fiftieth part of the 
periphery of the normal adult. From this narrow 
space we gather nearly all that our kind has to tell 
us, save what is told in speech. What it reveals to 
us is limited in scope, yet includes much that words 
fail to convey, all indeed that makes the difference 
between the spoken and the written word. The 
remainder of the body is not without its appealing 
power; yet the obdurate habit of the higher races — 
a habit that increases with the advance of their 
civilization — limits the use of all else than the 
countenance, and reduces even its service to the 



156 THE INDIVIDUAL 

utmost, so that what we find in the faces of men 
is but a small part of what its features might tell 
us. It is to speech alone that men are, under an 
instinctive guidance, coming to trust for the main- 
tenance of their relations with their fellows. Here- 
in lies the main difficulty in the exercise of the 
sympathetic motives. We are limited to speech or 
to the visible tokens that expression affords for 
nearly all we learn of our neighbours. 

Although spoken words may, by means of the 
emotional tones that accompany them, give us much 
concerning the state of mind of our fellow-men, it 
affords at best an imperfect means of communica- 
tion; for words are but signs that depend for their 
significance on the interpretation which each out 
of his own experience gives them. Shape them 
into phrase as we may, so that the separate units 
help to the fuller thought, they remain inadequate 
to convey more than a part of the meaning we would 
have them bear. The more individual the feeling 
we seek to express, the greater the difficulty of the 
transmission. With the advance in the richness 
of its vocabulary, a language gains something in its 
power to depict the shades of thought; yet with 
this advance comes an ever-increasing loss of clear- 
ness and consequent risk of misapprehension of 
meanings. It is evident that this condition is likely 



EXPRESSION OP THE INDIVIDUALITY 157 

to set limits to speech as a means of intercourse, for 
the reason that thought is less limited in growth 
than this method of denoting it. It is therefore to 
be reckoned that, do what we may to increase the 
efficiency of the modes of expression, the greater 
spirits of the time to come are likely to be even 
more solitary than in our own age. 

Much has been written concerning the human 
face, but so far as I have learned there is nothing in 
these writings which would serve the inquirer in 
the peculiar quest which he is here advised to make. 
In my own essay in this matter I found it best to 
begin by observing with some care the countenances 
of the lower animals. In doing this the observer 
will quickly find that his task is limited by the 
fact that the face is effectively restricted to the 
creatures of the vertebrate series. It is true that 
among the articulates the head parts are not with- 
out a quality akin to expression, and among the 
true insects where this portion of the body is dis- 
tinct from the rest of the frame it appears to be so 
shaped as to make a definite emotional effect upon 
the beholder. But these lower countenances have 
not the true facial quality, for the reason that they 
are invariable. They may be compared with masks 
imposed upon the individual, with no immediate 
relation to the state of mind of the bearer, and with 



158 THE INDIVIDUAL 

no means of denoting to his fellows the variations 
of that state. It is interesting to observe that the 
only clear approach to the human quality of counte- 
nance that we find in the invertebrates is among the 
cephalopods, creatures which belong in the type 
of Mollusca whence the backboned animals appear 
to have been derived. In the higher cephalopods, 
such as the squid and cuttlefishes, the head parts, 
though composed of structures wholly unrelated in 
origin to analogous parts in our own, have a look 
that is curiously like that we observe in the lower 
members of our own type. 

As soon as the vertebrate series has attained the 
first considerable upward step and has come into 
possession of a head, we find that this structure is 
formed of parts which in a general way lay down 
the plan on which all subsequent advance is to be 
worked out. There is a box to contain the brain, 
and on its front part are placed eyes, mouth, and, it 
may be, other organs of sense, so that the face is out- 
lined for the subsequent history of the series. In 
the fishes and thence upward through the reptiles, 
batrachians, and birds the countenance has little if 
any range of expression. It is hardly more indicative 
of states of mind than are the head parts of in- 
sects. Where there is any indication of emotions 
it is commonly signified by movements of the body. 



EXPRESSION OP THE INDIVIDUALITY 159 

Thus, among the birds, which are of all the lower 
animals the most intensely moved by love, hate, or 
fear, the attitude of the feathers or the expressive 
motion of parts other than the face serve to set 
forth the state of mind. 

When the vertebrates attain to the level of the 
suck-giving animals the face no longer has the rigid 
quality which characterized it in the lower members 
of the series. Scales and feathers are replaced by 
hair and skin, beneath which lies a considerable 
array of muscles, some of which quickly become 
devoted to the uses of expression. They draw the 
flexible parts about so that the face may indicate 
rage, grief, and fear. It is doubtful if any other 
emotions are distinctly set forth except these, at 
least until we attain to near our own kind, except in 
the domesticated dog, a creature which man has 
managed to make in many ways an image of him- 
self. Even in these humanized brutes the range of 
expression is due rather to the attitude of the body 
than to any considerable play of the features. 
There is, it is true, a look of the eye most human in 
its quality not due to a movement of the muscles, 
and as difficult to explain as in the like changes of 
our own, that tells the spiritual kinship of the dogs 
with men more perfectly than any mere play of the 
features could set forth. 



160 THE INDIVIDUAL 

When we come near to man in his collateral 
kinsmen, the monkeys, we find that the hairy cover- 
ing of the head, which in the lower species limits 
the possibility of the face, begins to be more irregu- 
larly disposed than before, so that some parts of the 
countenance are left bare, while the covering is 
elsewhere thickened in a manner to heighten the 
whole effect of the covering. It is here indeed that 
we find the beginnings of the human countenance 
as a part of the body; not as in the lower forms, 
merging backwardly by insensible gradations with 
the rest of the form, but set off from it by rather 
distinct limits. Here, too, we observe nearly all 
the more striking elements of expression that are to 
be found in the human face, not only the primitive 
emotions as there delineated, but merriment, sorrow, 
expectation, and contentment are almost as effec- 
tively told as in mankind. 

If after this glance at the natural history of the 
face we turn to its condition in our own species, we 
observe that in the passage from the lower plane of 
the anthropoids, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee, 
to the most brutelike savages, no distinct formal 
addition is made. Every feature, to the lesser de- 
tails of the parts, are in common. Even in the re- 
sulting expressions the variations, though great, are 
not so in kind but in degree. ISTowithstanding the 



EXPRESSION OP THE INDIVIDUALITY 161 

fact that the human face has in its highest states an 
indefinitely, we might almost say an infinitely great- 
er amount of expressional work to do than that of a 
chimpanzee, it has really no additional means of 
attaining the results which are to be accomplished. 
This limitation is but a part of the strange control 
that has denied man any structural or functional 
advance in his body, while it imposes on him a vast 
array of needs and duties unknown to his lower 
kindred. 

The very scanty physical means whereby the 
mind of man may tell its movements has led to 
some curious effects. Among these we may pos- 
sibly reckon the development of speech, which has 
come among the most highly developed peoples to 
be almost the only mode of conveying intelligence. 
It has coincidently led to an utter neglect of the 
countenance as an instrument of deliberately in- 
tended expression. All cultivated people recognise 
the power of the instrument, but with them its use 
is limited by certain prejudices to situations where, 
as in the actor's art, it is understood that it seeks 
only to show us what men could set forth in their 
faces were they socially free to do so. It would be 
interesting to consider this curious position in some 
detail, but we need note no more than the point 
that, owing to the restraint, the faces of completely 



162 THE INDIVIDUAL 

civilized people appear so far expressionless that 
they are likely to be exceedingly uninteresting to 
the novice in the study of the countenance. He 
will therefore do best to begin his observation by 
noticing the faces of children where, though the 
range of motions depicted is limited and the habit 
of restraint is early acquired, or possibly inherited, 
there is a measure of freedom in the delineation. 
When he is accustomed to watch faces he may profit- 
ably extend his study to adults of his own people. 
He will then be prepared to see that these masked 
visages are really less inscrutable than they might at 
first sight appear. The signs of emotional movement 
there set forth are subdued but not extinguished. 

As soon as the observer has overcome the idle, 
commonplace way of looking upon the faces of the 
people about him and has advanced a way in the 
royal art of reading something of what is therein, 
he will find himself possessed by a singularly in- 
tense interest in his task. There is indeed a 
strange fascination in the study of faces. JSTo other 
objects in this world so deserve and commend at- 
tention, yet there is none other in the visible realm 
so completely neglected. We look to them for the 
most that the world has to bestow. We are in de- 
spair if we can not behold them, yet our seeing is 
done in an instinctive, trivial manner that is satis- 



EXPRESSION OF THE INDIVIDUALITY 163 

fied with the fulfilment of the momentary need, ask- 
ing no account of the depths. If the student will 
break past this wall of inherited habit that limits 
the interest in faces to the momentary needs of hu- 
man intercourse, he will most likely be led on until 
indeed he may have to restrict his interest in this 
inquiry lest he become controlled by it in an exces- 
sive way. He may find that these countenances of 
men tell him more than it is convenient to know 
of his fellows, that he is too much moved by the 
sense of sympathy with them which the understand- 
ing arouses. He is likely to come to the conclusion 
that the common neglect of faces may be due, in part 
at least, to the need of limiting the range of the 
altruistic emotion. It is only the very rare and large 
man who, by his nature, is fitted to go forth to many. 
To the observer of individuality the study of 
faces affords a fit crown to his inquiries. He sees 
in them the summit, so far as we can discern, of the 
forces of the ages that have tended to build these 
isolated complex beings which take from the past, 
act in the present, and send on to the future the 
wonderful harvest of experience; each in itself at 
once perfectly separated, absolutely unique, but knit 
to all others by the power of exchanging influences 
by which power their ancestors have developed from 

the lowest estate to the station of man. 
12 



CHAPTEE VIII 

APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 

The measure of the appreciation of the individ- 
ual by his fellows in a general way increases with 
the advance in intellectual power. At first among 
the lower animals this appreciation is of the mate 
alone; with a gain in mental power, it extends 
to the progeny. Further on and up it goes forth 
to the herd or tribe or even to the kindred of the 
species. The obvious tendency of human develop- 
ment is steadily to augment the value of the im- 
pression which men make on one another. If we 
could contrive to ascertain the average intensity of 
this effect we would thereby obtain the best possible 
measure of the relative moral station of different 
civilizations. 

Although the result of the civilizing process is 

on the whole to make men more keenly conscious 

of their neighbours, in part for the reason that they 

thereby become helpfully dependent on one another 

164 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 165 

in more and more varied ways, there are certain 
influences which are developed in complicated so- 
cieties which tend to limit the mutual appreciation 
of its members. Thus, the caste system in any of 
its varied forms is an effective means — we might al- 
most say a contrivance — for restricting the impres- 
sion which persons should make on one another. So, 
too, in our crowded communities, the impossibility 
of attending to more than a few of them breeds a 
habit of neglecting the natural claim our fellows 
make upon our minds. Persons accustomed to 
dwell in associations where it is possible to obey the 
instinctive impulse to regard those with whom they 
come in contact, are therefore distressed when they 
move about in a crowded city. They have to give 
over the ancient and admirable custom of recognis- 
ing each of the bipeds as one of their own kind, 
entitled to some measure of sympathetic attention, 
and in self-defence to regard them as mere moving 
things. 

It is interesting to note the gradations in the 
appreciation of the other individual, and to observe 
how far they relate to the natural history of the 
process by which the person has become appreci- 
ated by his kind. First and by far the strongest 
of the presentations of the other is that brought 
about by the excitation of the intelligence arising 



166 THE INDIVIDUAL 

from a combination of its powers with the sexual 
motive in what we term love. There is no doubt 
that through this connection of the most primitive 
impulse with the higher mind the strongest and 
more complete sense of the other is attained. It is 
due to the fact that the sympathetic motive here at 
work is the most ancient and deeply seated of all we 
inherit. It goes back for its origin to the very 
foundations of life. 

Only less intense in its power of presentation 
of the individual is the affection of the parent, par- 
ticularly that of the mother, for the child. This, 
too, is an old, long-founded motive; but it dates not 
so far back in the history of life as the sexual im- 
pulse, and on this account perhaps is of less domi- 
nant value. The motives that lead to friendships 
had their foundations laid far later than the primal 
impulses before noted, and their effectiveness in di- 
recting the attention to the neighbour is corre- 
spondingly less strong. "When we come to the latest 
form of altruism — that which is devoted to men as 
men, quite without reference to other and nearer 
relations — we find the motive inconstant and of 
little intensity. Save in the very few, it is as yet 
imperfectly developed. 

In looking forward to the future development of 
the attention of persons to one another, it is pos- 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 107 

sible to find some guidance from the evidence of 
history. It is in the first place clear that the pres- 
entation effected by the sexual desires is in a gen- 
eral way, with the advance of mankind, steadfastly 
becoming ennobled. It may be in our day less in- 
tense than in earlier times, but the change, if it has 
occurred, has been attended by a distinct enlarge- 
ment of motives that enter into the plexus that 
constitutes love. There is reason for the belief 
that lovers are really in a large sense more to one 
another in our time than they were in that when 
their emotions were set forth in a more passionate 
manner. A wider appreciation of human relations 
has served here, as elsewhere, to alter modes of ex- 
pression without in any way diminishing the im- 
pulses which are involved in the actions. 

In the relations of parent and child we note the 
same sobering effect of enlarged understanding 
which is to be observed in love between men and 
women. If we would find the primitive turbulent 
form of that affection which is characteristic of the 
species, we will have to seek it among aboriginal folk. 
Civilization with its improved knowledge has made 
the normal family much less picturesque than 
it was of old; but it has given the association a 
value which it could not have when it rested on the 
ancient instincts alone. The child is no longer a 



108 THE INDIVIDUAL 

mere beloved possession, it is a great responsibility 
as well, and the gravity thereof is ever enhancing 
with the increase of our knowledge. There is no 
less love of mother and father for their offspring, 
but there is much more of thought in the relation 
than of old. 

The only relation depending upon the presenta- 
tion of the individual to his fellows which appears 
to be undergoing a change that can be counted as 
for the worse is that of friendship. It appears 
probable that friendships of the ancient type are 
less common and of a less devoted nature than in 
earlier centuries; moreover, that our conditions are 
steadfastly making that relation even less necessary 
to the lives of men. There are several reasons for 
this, none of which are unsatisfactory to the philan- 
thropist. In the first place the companionship of 
the family — of man and wife, of parent and child — 
has in our societies a place altogether above that 
attained in earlier times. The ancient despot of a 
household rarely won friendship beneath his roof. 
Even if he were the most gracious of men the 
shadow of his power stood between him and his sub- 
jects. He therefore had to go abroad for associa- 
tions which should have that equality of rights and 
obligations which alone affords the foundation of 
true friendship. Again, the diffusion of interest, 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 169 

which has served to bring about a more sympathetic 
relation of all the members of a community to one 
another, probably has operated to lessen the meas- 
ure of affection between individuals beyond the 
family limits. Accepting, as we do, the essential 
kinship of all the people about us, going forth to 
men in general in a way unknown in earlier cen- 
turies, there is a diminished need for intense friend- 
ships of the type we find described in the literature 
of earlier times. The change accompanies the 
marked diffusion of interests among cultivated peo- 
ple, which is an eminent characteristic of our age. 
It is a matter of much practical importance 
that we should understand the essential difficulty 
we have to encounter in our efforts to comprehend 
the nature of our neighbours. The effect of cus- 
tom in this perennial task — as in all other like ex- 
periences — is to develop a commonplace state of 
mind which, leads us to accept others of our kind 
as mere duplications of ourselves. Our conscious- 
ness, happily for our comfort, but, as we know, most 
falsely, presents us to ourselves as simple beings of 
the moment, with no more complication than exists 
in the material world about us. If we could look 
into the depths of our nature, into the ages of its 
history, and the vast store of inheritances mani- 
fested and concealed that go to make up the com- 



170 THE INDIVIDUAL 

plex, the spectacle would be overwhelming. It is 
therefore well that we see no more than we do 
into the depths of our nature, and that we are 
even more limited in our knowledge of our fel- 
low-men. 

The first step in our effort to understand our 
kind should lead toward the recognition of the pro- 
found individuality of each of its members. To 
attain this it is necessary to look well to the funda- 
mental postulate of all our social intercourse, which 
is that of the essential likeness of men: that our 
neighbour is in effect ourselves in another body. 
There is perhaps no other of the necessary assump- 
tions on which we found our common life that con- 
tains at once so much of truth and of error. In the 
prehuman stages of our series, at least among the 
simpler animals, this instinctive claim as to the kin- 
ship of the neighbour was to a great degree valid. 
But with the advance in the intellectual complica- 
tion, which we observe in the higher mammals, even 
long before the advent of man, this likeness of men- 
tal quality begins rapidly to diminish. In our own 
species the body of intellectual inheritances and 
the multitude of their interactions is vastly beyond 
what it is in our lower kindred, so that the individ- 
ual of our estate is parted from his mates in a meas- 
ure that is in no wise indicated by the peculiarities 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY Ifl 

of his aspect. For while men differ from one an- 
other in body in a far greater measure than any 
other species of mammals, these physical differences 
are trifling as compared with the spiritual. If we 
could contrive to see the minds of men as we behold 
their frames, the creatures would probably appear 
to us as diverse as the most widely separated or- 
ganic forms. 

The spontaneous assumption we make as to the 
essential likeness of men is doubtless founded on 
the recognition of the fact that in all the simpler 
and more important relations of the individual, like 
experience, leads to reactions generally similar to 
our own under like conditions. Because they 
laugh, or weep, or are vexed where we are thus 
affected, we conceive that they feel just as we do. 
This judgment is instinctive; it is the foundation 
of the best the world gives us; it must be taken as 
true. At the same time it should not blind us to 
the fact that the proof of correspondence in what 
is behind the acts is most imperfect, and that this 
proof relates only to a very limited part of the 
nature of the being, for the greater part of its 
nature lies in fields where this method of compari- 
son with ourselves can not be effected. It is not 
unlikely that the instinctive postulation of the kins- 
man as ourselves in another form is an inherited 



172 THE INDIVIDUAL 

notion, coming to us with the great store that has 
been transmitted from the lower stages of life where 
it was nearer to the truth than it is in our present 
stage of existence. 

If we approach the question as to the individual- 
ity of human quality with open eyes, we soon see 
reason to qualify the judgment to which our fore- 
running sympathies lead us. In the lowlier plane of 
thought and action, in all that relates to man as a 
mere intelligent animal, and in most that is evident 
in the mere savage, the likeness is evidently near 
enough for all the uses of society which is founded 
on these simpler features of man's nature. But as 
we rise to higher levels of the intelligence, the effort 
to win sympathetic contact becomes more and more 
difficult, until the detachment becomes so complete 
that each being has, perforce, to dwell apart from 
its kind, with no more consolation than what is af- 
forded by a vague sense that others must surely 
feel even as he does. Although language, gesture, 
and that marvellous instrument of expression the 
face, may do much to set him forth to his fellows, 
the capacities which part him from them tell him 
that the separation is complete and in no wise to be 
avoided. He learns that the sympathies can help 
him only in the ancient relations where the practice 
of ages gives to the touch of hand or tone of voice 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 173 

the power to bring the blessed sense of oneness with 
the neighbour. 

Perhaps the surest way to a clear recognition of 
the essential mystery of the individual man is to 
note the instances in which the greatest have lived 
among their fellows without recognition, effec- 
tively hidden while they lived by this garb of a com- 
mon humanity, not to be revealed until the mas- 
querade was over. The man who, more than any 
other, has shaped learning and set the paths in 
which it should go onward for twenty-four centu- 
ries was, to those who knew him, " the vain and 
chattering little Aristotle "; and the Greatest that 
has dwelt in this world was, to the understanding 
of educated Eomans, but a fanatical peasant who 
disturbed the peace of Jerusalem. It is this essen- 
tial isolation of the higher qualities of the man 
which makes the prophet without honour in his own 
country or time. The more truly the prophet, the 
surer he is to be parted from his people. It is only 
when his grave has served as a stepping-stone that 
they may attain a station where they can sympathize 
with him. 

Something of the loneliness of the prophet be- 
longs in the life of every man who rises ever so little 
above the simplest round of human cares and com- 
forts. Whenever tempted by the deeps he ventures 



174 THE INDIVIDUAL 

beyond the primitive domestic fold, lie is at once 
parted from his comrades. Necessarily alone, he 
must for his protection seek an ideal sympathy with 
the unseen. So it comes about that a new kind of 
affection is developed — one that does not concern 
the knowable fellow-being, but the invisible mate — 
the ideal of the kind, the state, the divine, whereso- 
ever the spirit may find it. Those who journey far 
on this way are in the end fortunate, in that their 
new devotions come at last to include the old, giv- 
ing to the homely things of the common life a 
dignity and largeness which lift it to the higher 
realm. Most men, however, do not attain this re- 
conciliation. For their more enlarged existence 
they have to dwell apart in their individual realm 
of hope and fancy. In various ways they may seek 
to express their feelings to those who are about 
them. They may, after the manner of poets, make 
a profession of their feelings and so win bread or 
fame from their attempts to disclose themselves; 
but the essential quality of their inner life remains 
remote and really unexpressed by such action. Who 
supposes that Shakespeare was ever really known to 
his best friends? It is indeed to the inevitable 
isolation of such a genius that we may attribute the 
doubts that beset many people as to the authority 
of the works commonly ascribed to him. They ask 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 175 

why such power was not shown in his aspect, in his 
face, and in his ordinary contacts with men. The 
answer is that the features and customary actions 
of men have been shaped for the uses of the com- 
mon ancient life. The newer and seldom spirit has 
no such effective means of presenting itself to our 
eyes. For its use it has words alone which fit the 
need imperfectly and in very limited ways. So it 
is that the Stagirite seemed vain and chattering, 
and the Christ, to all save the few, a poor fanatic 
who might conveniently be swept away. 

The larger view as to the nature of the individ- 
ual man to which we are brought by a study of his 
conditions may seem at first sight to limit the range 
of sympathy for our fellows. Even a little experi- 
ence will show that this is far from being the case. 
About the most effective bar to the altruistic move- 
ment of the spirit is to be found in the unstimu- 
lating acceptance of the kindred as mere repetitions 
of ourselves. ( Thus considered they appear covered 
with that dust of the commonplace which hides 
from us the splendour of this world.X When we 
come to see them not mere other selves, but as be- 
ings, each moving in its own orbit, inevitably and 
forever alone, yet needing and seeking all the cheer 
that we can send to them across the dreadful void, 
we find in this larger understanding the source 



176 THE INDIVIDUAL 

of a deeper love than we have known before — a love 
that is mingled with the reverence the ancients gave 
to their gods, which our better knowledge shows to 
be the due of all men, even the humblest. 

There is no foundation for enduring affection 
so sure as dignity. Therefore, all we can see of the 
real splendour of the individual helps to affirm the 
bond that unites us to him. 

When the full meaning of the individual life 
comes to be adequately conceived, we may expect 
to see a new and higher order of human relations 
based on that better understanding. There is no 
reason, however, to believe that this gain in knowl- 
edge will in any measure change or diminish the 
ancient accents of the sympathies. Men will, as 
of old, be nearest to one another in those parts of 
their nature where the inherited instincts most 
move them to union, and where the instinctive 
means of expression provide the means of inter- 
course. The love of parent for child, of lovers for 
one another, of men for their institutions, are un- 
shakably founded, and no extensions of motive can 
do more than magnify their value. But beyond the 
region of the simpler relations, where the experience 
of the ages has made everything familiar, and all 
too commonplace, we are to learn that there is a 
vast realm of the other and remoter individuality, 



APPRECIATION OP OTHER INDIVIDUALITY \ff 

mostly unknown to its possessor, and absolutely- 
parted from his fellow-beings, however near they 
may be. As time goes on, and the arts of setting 
ourselves forth are bettered, we shall doubtless gain 
in the capacity to draw near to our mates, in those 
portions of our natures that are not now vivified by 
such contact. All the modes of literary expression 
lead toward this good end of bringing together the 
men who would else have remained remote from the 
influences of sympathy. Yet the relief that can be 
hoped for in the future from the growth in the 
means of passing the gulf is not great. Thirty cen- 
turies have given little or nothing of gain in the way 
of speech, written or spoken. For in such work no 
man of to-day has done better than he who wrote 
the story of Job. In gesture and the related sculp- 
ture we tell less than the masters of old; in paint- 
ing hardly more. In music alone has the last thou- 
sand years helped men to express themselves. There, 
indeed, is a most substantial gain, one of which the 
possibilities are as yet by no means exhausted. 
Something of further advance may be won, in this 
endeavour to convey a knowledge of our feelings in 
the remoter experiences of the mind through the 
statement of scientific concepts. As commonly 
understood, these appreciations of nature are sup- 
posed to be purely rational, and thus to lie beyond 



1Y8 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the sympathetic field. Such indeed is the case so 
long as they are unfamiliar and therefore with dif- 
ficulty grasped, requiring for the process the vigor- 
ous attention of the mind to the logical order alone. 
But when the new truths become familiar they 
will begin to have an emotional content, or at least 
be nearly, if not spontaneously, linked with feeling. 
If such a union should be established , it may come 
about that through mutual knowledge men may gain 
a fairer means of union. Something of this gain 
has already been won, and we may hope for the 
time when far more of it will be at the service 
of man. 

While it may interest us to speculate as to the 
betterment of the means by which the void between 
human individuals may be here and there bridged 
over, we can not fail to see that it is in the very 
nature of these units of all degrees to be parted 
from all others, and that the measure of this separa- 
tion increases at each stage of advance in the or- 
ganization , in something like a geometric ratio. 
When we attain to the station of man we find a crea- 
ture in effect infinitely more isolated than the atom. 
Moreover, every influence that makes for culture, 
reacting on the inherited complex of man by carry- 
ing him further into the field of individuality, serves 
to increase this feature of his life. Thus there 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 1?9 

seems to be no chance that the creature will ever be 
made effectively nearer to others of his kind, but 
rather that he will have to find his final comfort in 
a sense of reconciliation with the Supreme. To 
that end science and religion alike lead. 

In the field of practice in human relations a 
sound view as to the nature and meaning of individ- 
uality may help us to a larger method of dealing 
with ourselves and our fellow-men. It is not to be 
expected that those of to-day or of the near future 
will be able to pin the story of the new concept on 
their sleeves and make it an ever-present guide of 
conduct. Such is not the ready way in which learn- 
ing, however well transmitted, acts on the minds of 
our kind. The order of the influences which de- 
termine the intercourse of men is so compact and 
fixed that there is scant place for the newcomers. 
If such arise, it is slowly and by a difficult process 
of displacing the veterans of the host. 

To go but a little way into the large problems 
of morals which this view of the mind opens, it may 
be said that the first rule for conduct that it indi- 
cates concerns the relation of the men to them- 
selves. It is evident that when men come to recog- 
nise that they are not merely the bit of mind stuff 
which is revealed by the tiny light of consciousness, 

but that each is a great realm that has almost un- 
13 



180 THE INDIVIDUAL 

limited extension into the past, and like possibilities 
of unboundedness in the future, they will respect 
themselves the more for the better understanding. 
Such gain in dignity will be a most precious acquisi- 
tion; for, as before remarked, of all the ordinary ills 
of mankind, those arising from personal under- 
valuing are the most ineradicable. So, too, in the 
social relations, all that makes for a high conception 
of the fellow-men serves to better the circumstances 
of our contact with them by making us feel the no- 
bility of the neighbour and the essential majesty 
that is behind his commonplace aspect. Nearly all 
the value of life comes from the esteem in which we 
hold our fellow-men: it is indeed but the reflection 
of our judgment of what we_ are. If they seem 
but mean trifles, then we can be no more; if they 
appear to us august, we rise to a like station. There- 
fore, at the foundation of all morality lies the stand- 
ard by which we measure ourselves in measuring 
others. 

It is not to be supposed that any one of us 
can take with him into his daily contact with 
people the views which are here urged as to the mys- 
teries and splendours of the individual man. The 
commonplace spirit of life has us, perhaps happily, 
so well in hand that, picture the deeper truths as we 
may, the next person we meet will present himself 



APPRECIATION OP OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 181 

in the familiar shape of a common mortal. But 
much reflection on these matters will induce some 
change in this habitual inattention to all but the 
visible presence, so that in time the observer will 
find that he sees further and deeper than he did 
before. Especially in the ordinary crises of life, 
when those with whom we are associated claim our 
special attention, will it be found easily possible to 
turn our philosophy to account. We may thus have 
practice in bettering the art of intercourse, by hold- 
ing fast to the knowledge which should clear away 
what is cheap and brutal in our judgment of the 
neighbour. By such wholesome, lessons we may 
hope to break down the ancient evils of the modes 
of contact with our fellows — those habitual states 
of mind which were developed in the ignorance of 
our lower life — thereby giving the sympathetic mo- 
tives a chance to do their appointed work. 

I am tempted to go one step further in this ex- 
cursion, and to note once again that those who would 
better their appreciation of individual men will do 
well to study their faces. At first this advice may 
seem to be more than unnecessary — it may, indeed, 
appear preposterous; for what do men know, if it be 
not the countenances of their kind. From the time 
we begin to see that of our mother to the moment we 
die, our lives are spent in such regarding. Yet, if I 



182 THE INDIVIDUAL 

may trust my own experience, and what I can dis- 
cern of others, we do not really attend to this source 
of revelation, and fail to win its true value. Here, 
as elsewhere, custom has bred in us the habit of 
doing our task with the least possible expenditure of 
effort, and of going no further than we are impelled 
by need — except it be from affection, we look for no 
more in the face than we have to know for the mo- 
mentary quest. Even that little we seek in an 
instinctive manner, and not with any effort to de- 
velop skill in the most important art of reading the 
signs of men. Thus, although the face tells only a 
small part of the .story of the individual, we fail to 
make any considerable use of what it sets forth, and 
so lose one of the ways of extending our sympathetic 
understanding with our fellows. 

In all the estimates we have to make in the field 
of duty the value we set upon the individuality 
of our fellows enters into the reckoning. It is 
the base from which we make all our determina- 
tions as to the conduct of life. From it we learn 
the possible heights and depths of human nature. 
In the ordinary commonplace way of looking at 
our companions, a way that has been affirmed by 
ages of experience, we conceive them as essentially 
like ourselves. This conception is, so far as it 
relates to the essentials, manifestly true. It is 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 183 

indeed most important that the first instinctive im- 
pression which the neighbour gives us should be 
of this likeness, for on it is founded all our personal 
sympathies. Up to our present station in the devel- 
opment of the social relations, the higher powers 
of the mind have had little share in that process. 
It is now time that we should enter on another and 
more elevated plane of these emotions, one where 
the understanding as to the nature of individuality 
may well show us that the kinsman is much more 
than one's self; that along with the comforting 
identities there exist diversities which part him 
from us as by the spaces of the stars, making a 
perfect union impossible, but affording an end- 
less opportunity for advances toward that unattain- 
able end. 

At first sight this idea of the solitariness of the 
individual may seem to oppose a barrier to the ex- 
tension of the altruistic motive. What reason 
should we have for seeking the friendly union if at 
the outset we have to assume that such a union, in 
any approach to completeness, is impossible? Let 
us, however, remember that all the real goals are 
not to be won. Complete learning, perfect peace, the 
utmost development of our abilities, or the ends we 
seek in the ways of religion, are all confessedly un- 
attainable. They are noble for the reason that 



184 THE INDIVIDUAL 

they lie away in the infinite realm and have never 
been grazed by the chariot wheels. So, too, we may 
expect it to be with onr friendships and nearer affec- 
tions. When they are enlarged by the better under- 
standing they will have a more spacious quality than 
before. Lovers and friends will hold none the less 
firmly for knowing that, near as they are to one an- 
other in the elementary human qualities, they are 
inevitably separated by the diversity of their further 
natures. We may indeed hope that through this 
enlarged sense of the person, of the wonderfulness 
of its coming through the ages, the pathetic dig- 
nity of its isolation, and the swift going to the dark 
realm, will do much to clear away those ancient ills 
of intercourse which arise from the excessive judg- 
ment of others by ourselves. 

Beyond the immediate discernible profit which 
may come from a better recognition of the nature 
of the person, we may well reckon on other and 
more far-reaching gains which time will bring to 
those of the hereafter who shall more fully share in 
the wider view. We of this age are hindered by 
the traditions, in their controlling power like in- 
stincts, that have been handed down to us by our 
ancestors and are inwoven in our social concepts. 
They of the later age, we may hope, are to dwell in 
the understanding that every person is not only 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 185 

hedged about with divinity, but is in himself essen- 
tially divine in his isolation. 

The surest gain that can come from a better 
knowledge of the nature of the individual will be 
found in a truer estimate of our own value. Taking 
themselves as men commonly do for no more than 
the trifling part of the self that appears in the 
field of consciousness, with no motive of train- 
ing impelling them to explorations of their per- 
sonal realm, they almost inevitably come to a 
mean conception of their selfhood. While that 
humility which rests upon broad knowledge and 
is affirmed by high ideals may be helpful, self- 
contempt due to ignorance is the most harmful 
of all our misconceptions. To it is due more of 
the baseness of men than is caused by all their 
passions. When it becomes habitual, as is the 
case with most who have lost their youthful confi- 
dence, there is no longer hope of achievement or 
of other than formal enforced virtue. All that our 
societies have gained has been won by men who saw 
beyond the bounds which limit the vision of their 
fellows and have striven to actualize their enlarged 
views. Not one in a hundred attain to such vision. 
Not one in a thousand of those so blessed see. in 
any. long perspectives, for the reason that they 
can not look beyond the mere rushlight that the 



186 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ordinary understanding of a man concerning his 
nature sheds on his personality. 

So long as men take themselves as accidents, 
with no past beyond the limits that generation sets 
to them, they can have no basis other than their en- 
thusiasm or the blind faith it breeds for any exalted 
conception of their place in Nature, j Coming upon 
minds thus uninformed, the revelations of physical 
science as to the vast spaces, the interminable ages, 
and the mechanical order of the natural universe, 
serve only to appal. But if they can be brought to 
see that they are themselves a part — the most ac- 
complished part — of the whole mechanism, that 
what has been doing in the eons since the matter 
of the universe began to gather in the spheres, has 
steadfastly worked for their creation, then indeed 
they will feel that the realm is their mother and 
that fear of it is a shame. 

It must not be supposed that this state of mind 
can be gained by mere knowledge, by the blind ac- 
ceptance of the teacher's statements, or even by the 
fullest learning. If won at all, it is at the price of 
much reflection on the sequences of action that have 
served to bring the individual of our estate, by 
means of an infinite succession of parentage from 
the lowliest atomic to the passing stage to which- we 
have attained. It is by the exercise of the con- 



APPRECIATION OF OTHER INDIVIDUALITY 187 

structive meditative imagination, which has given 
us all the greater revelations of science as well as 
literature, that we may attain to this crowning result 
of understanding. It is by the exercise of this 
power alone that men may come to behold their true 
place in Nature. 



CHAPTER IX 



PEAK AND VALOUK 



We have now to consider the natural history of 
two contrasted motives which have necessarily had 
much to do with the attitude of men toward death — 
motives, indeed, which afford the primitive impulses 
that have mainly determined the instinctive and 
traditional attitude of men oncerning this crisis. 
Those motives are fear and valour. 

Fear is evidently the most permanent of all the 
emotions in the animal nature. The sexual desires 
and hunger may at times be stronger; but they 
are temporary or intermittent, while fear is, from 
birth to death, ever ready to spring into the com- 
mand of the creature. The universality and activity 
of fear in all animals which have enough intelli- 
gence to appreciate the relations of their surround- 
ings to themselves ; is well accounted for by the 
theory of natural selection, though on this as on 
other cases it will not explain the origin of the 
188 



FEAR AND VALOUR 189 

motive. Here, as elsewhere, it is seen to be compe- 
tent to nurture the seed, but not to create it. 

It is, as we have seen, in the nature of an indi- 
vidual to be assailed by its environment. The most 
of its gains and losses come alike from that field. 
It has ever to apprehend assault that may bring pain 
or death. Hence, those creatures which are most 
fearful, up to the point where they may expend a 
destructive amount of activity in fleeing, are the 
most likely to escape from danger, and in conse- 
quence to survive. Their offspring will inherit a 
measure of their timidity, so that the motive may 
be further accumulated by selection. Thus, the 
work has gone on until all the intelligent species are 
quick to fear — a condition which has proved advan- 
tageous to them; it indeed accounts in most cases 
for their survival. Even the greater beasts of prey, 
those species such as the lion and the tiger, are, 
when not enraged, very sensitive to fear; so, too, 
the largest of the mammals, the elephants and the 
whales, which we might suppose free from dread, are 
ever watching for danger. 

It is hardly too much to say that fear has been 
the great quickener of the intelligence — the most 
effective spur to awaken the mind, bringing it to a 
sense of the world about it. The amount of dis- 
cernment necessary to find the food, or the mate, is 



190 THE INDIVIDUAL 

limited, calling for few decisions, and those helped 
by the senses in an effective manner. But the judg- 
ments that fear requires are incessant. They must 
range far in space and concern a great variety of 
things. It demands a swift and, within the limits 
of the needs, accurate classification of all cognized 
objects into those which are harmless and those 
which are harmful. To it we probably owe the 
motive of curiosity, which awakens the sense of 
danger and leads animals to risk that which they 
dread, in order that they may the more clearly dis- 
cern its nature. 

There can be no question that fear was absolute- 
ly necessary in order that the higher organic forms 
should be effectively adjusted to their environment. 
It is an ancient and valuable mentor: it has guided 
life from the lower to the higher estate, not only 
oxir minds but our bodies bear the useful marks 
of its control. The quickness of will, the readiness 
in the use of the instruments of defence, the swift 
response of all the powers to the summons of need, 
are in great part due to the habits that fear has 
bred in us all, man and brute alike. 

When man came from the lower life he brought 
with him a large share of animal fear. His ancestry 
had from the beginning belonged in the groups of 
fleeing rather than to those of fighting animals. In 



FEAR AND VALOUR 191 

fact, there is no other creature of his size who is 
so singularly deficient in natural weapons. That he 
quickly became converted into a masterful com- 
batant was due to his peculiar mental relations to 
the world about him, to his progressive desires, 
and to his capacity for rational and associated ac- 
tion. Although all record of the first stages in the 
humanizing processes are lost to us, we can still 
see what appears to be a remnant of it in the lower 
savages. There we find the emotion of fear nearly 
as well indicated as among the monkeys. The crea- 
tures are evidently at all times quick to it, watching 
the beasts, their fellow-men, and the elements for 
the signs of danger. We see there, too, abundant 
signs of another and complementary motive, that 
of valour, which is to play so large a part in turning 
the beast into the man. This is shown in the lower 
peoples; it becomes strong as they advance; it is 
one of the surest gauges of the station in the ascent 
to which a people has attained. In all the mammals 
above the level of the pouched forms, and perhaps 
even there, as well as in nearly all the birds, we may 
commonly observe the humble beginnings of the 
valorous motive. It comes in this way: as the fam- 
ily or the herd gains coherence the offspring are for 
a time beside the mother and in her care. While 
thus in the position of the defender, the mother is 



192 THE INDIVIDUAL 

evidently quicker to feel the impulse of fear than at 
other times; but she is even as quick to put it aside, 
or rather to submerge it in the rage with which she 
meets the assailant. Where the male and female 
dwell together as mates the father will, at times, 
show a trace of the same protecting motive. This, 
however, is rare; it is the mother who, in nearly all 
groups of mammals, shows the way of our escape 
from the ancient, self -guarding fear into the higher 
sympathetic realm. She is the first to be brave; she 
remains, even in our own species, by nature the 
bravest when the danger moves her through the 
emotions to action. 

Where the family passes into the herd we find 
in most instances that the defence of the associa- 
tion comes to depend on the males — sometimes on 
the single head of a gens, more commonly on a 
number of associated males. These mature males 
acting as the watchful defenders of the herd are a 
distinct feature in the high Mammalia. Even 
among the excessively timid apes they feel their 
obligation of duty to the weaker members of their 
community and will do battle to defend them. 
Darwin quotes an account of an incident where a 
drove of monkeys was pursued with hunting dogs. 
All were fleeing as best they might when, in his 
panic, one of the younger of the herd took refuge on 



FEAR AND VALOUR 193 

the top of an isolated stone. Seeing his plight an 
old male monkey turned hack, fought hi£ way 
through the dogs, and managed to bear his charge 
away in safety. Any one who has seen the terror 
that monkeys have of dogs will recognise that this 
act was in a high measure valiant. It has in it 
much of valour in its best human form. Nothing 
else in the records shows so well the spiritual rela- 
tion between our collateral kinsman, the ape, and 
our own kind. 

By his inheritances man is entitled to be the 
most timorous of the larger animals, for he belongs, 
as before noted, to a singularly noncombatant 
group. Moreover, by his intelligence and the con- 
structive imagination which goes therewith, he adds 
to the sources of fear which his senses bring to him 
a host that people the unseen. He extends the an- 
cient terrors until he creates a fancied world of 
terrors, one happily unknown to the life in the 
earlier days and the lower stages of being. The 
most of these fears have gathered around death, 
which now, distinctly recognised as it never was 
before as an inevitable event, becomes the central 
point in a vast framework of emotional and intellec- 
tual constructions. 

Among the animals below man the fear they 
have of danger clearly does not include that of 



194 THE INDIVIDUAL 

death. There is no reason to believe that the idea 
of the end of their individuality ever occurs to 
them. All the steps that may lead up to the finish 
arouse terror, but the sight of their dead compan- 
ions, if there be no show of blood, appears in no case 
to excite more than curiosity. If they have any idea 
of their condition it is, most likely, that they are 
sleeping. Only in a few species of Herbivora does 
the smell of the blood of the kind appear to be dis- 
turbing. It is, in effect, impossible that death can 
have any meaning to the brutes, save it may be in 
the case of the higher apes and with the humanized 
dog. We see nothing in their acts that leads to sup- 
pose that they find in it a matter for questioning. 
If we should seek some one mark which, in the in- 
tellectual advance from the brutes to man, might 
denote the passage to the human side, we might 
well find it in the moment when it dawned on the 
nascent man that death was a mystery which he had 
in his turn to meet. 

From the time when man began to face death 
to the present stage of his development there has 
been a continuous struggle between the motives of 
personal fear on the one hand, and valour on the 
other. That of fear has been constantly aided by 
the work of the imagination. For one fact of 
danger there have been scores of fancied risks to 



FEAR AND VALOUR 195 

come from the unseen world. Against this great 
host of imaginary ills, which tended utterly to bear 
men down, they had but one helper — their spirit of 
valiant self-sacrifice for the good of their family, 
their clan, their state, their race, or, in the climax, 
for the Infinite above. 

Even with the lower savages we find that cour- 
ageous self-devotion is placed first among the hu- 
man qualities. In every stage of human advance 
it is greatly and, as it seems to some observers, 
excessively valued. Why, it may be asked, should 
we select this motive of valour, this death-facing 
motive, from all the other qualities to set it upon 
a throne for admiration? Surely the quieter, more 
commonplace motives of industry, faithfulness to 
routine duties, are, in the aggregate, of far greater 
importance both to the character of the individual 
and to the society of which he forms a part. We 
can well conceive a happy association without the 
presence of the death-facing heroes; in fact, they 
are the least likely of all the kinds of men to bring 
happiness where they dwell, for they are oftenest 
the prophets of unrest. But in this as in many 
other things where the popular judgment at first 
sight appears in error, we see on closer view that 
it is substantially right. The new life of man de- 
pended on his ability to bear down the tide of fear 
14 



196 THE INDIVIDUAL 

which came to him in part by inheritance, and 
in yet larger part from his limited yet vivid concep- 
tion of the world which his intelligence revealed to 
him. In that task of overcoming fear by valour 
he was on the appointed way to his salvation. Eude 
as the path may seem, brutal as were the deeds that 
were done on its way, it led upward. 

So long as men remained in savagery and as 
often as they fall back into it. they value only one 
kind of valour, that of personal conflict with the 
fellow-man or brute. But with the higher states of 
society it gradually comes to be recognised, or rather 
unconsciously accepted, , that there are many other 
forms of brave self-devotion besides those which 
are set in arms. While the courage of battle was 
absolutely necessary to the safety of the tribe in 
the early state of human life, advancement has de- 
pended on other forms of the motive which go to 
overcome a host of other evils, those not to be over- 
come by arms, and which in their removal require 
a less primitive and picturesque, but as effectively 
valiant spirit as the deeds of war. 

If there were any means of measuring the rela- 
tive amounts of courage that had gone into the 
physical and the moral struggles of our people re- 
spectively, we should probably find that the moral 
triumphs had cost far more valour than those of the 



FEAR AND VALOUR 197 

battlefield. Yet the courage of the social order 
must be taken as the successor of that of war, just as 
the other parts of our human quality is the product 
of the lower life. People value most the ancient 
forms of courage, for they see there the complete 
and effective tragedy. Going to death at Ther- 
mopylae or Santiago is a vastly clearer sign of valour 
than is set forth by any patient, devoted sacrifice 
for the public good. JSTor can it be denied that the 
courage of the fight may call for a more immediate 
and complete self-devotion than is likely ever to 
be demanded of any one, save those who have gone 
to the stake or the scaffold for conscience' sake. 

Perhaps the largest share of valour which has 
been devoted to the good of man, certainly that 
which has been most profitably expended, has been 
given to a contest against the beliefs that have 
grown up around the fact of death. As soon as 
men began to see that death needed explanation 
— in other words, as soon as they became men — 
their constructive imaginations began to explore 
the mystery and to fill it with fancies. In its 
first stages this process was naturally full of evil. 
The primitive man could, of course, make no better 
gods than himself, so he peopled the unknown with 
a host of brutal creatures, each demanding service 
and sacrifice after the manner of his own chieftains. 



198 THE INDIVIDUAL 

Hence the ancient curses of sorcery and diabolism 
which have so weighed on man. The extent to 
which this evil of primitive demon worship has re- 
tarded the advance of man is. just coming to be 
duly appreciated. In the case of many savages, it 
appears to be the most down-bearing of all the ills 
they suffer. It has been suggested that it was the 
main reason for the failure of the North American 
Indian to gain in numbers or social station. This 
savage is, in general, of vigorous body, fairly pro- 
lific, and of considerable mental ability, but he was 
so ridden by cruel superstitions that he had no 
chance to rise. 

To the earlier and more brutal explanations of 
the unknown which was opened by the anticipation 
of death time gradually brought relief. The evil 
gods mended their ways as their makers grew larger 
in their understandings. But this process was one 
of slow growth. It is indeed in the nature of a 
religion to remain much behind the state of moral 
advance of the people who hold to it. Each stage 
of the ongoing is retarded by the conviction of the 
people that their gods, even those who are devils, 
are sacred, and that the prophet of good deserves 
not only their ultimate vengeance but more im- 
mediate punishment by all true believers. Every 
one of these steps upward has had to be won by 



FEAR AND VALOUR 199 

valiant men; in fact, the wars for or against a bet- 
terment of their gods has been a most striking fea- 
ture in human history. 

Valiant self-sacrifice for faith is, at least to the 
truly civilized man, the type of highest valour. To 
it has gone and from it has come much of the best 
of human nature, including that courage of opin- 
ion, that balanced judgment as to the problems of 
existence which belong alike in the highest reli- 
gious and in the scientific spirit; that state of mind 
which looks boldly into the darkness without fear, 
with perfect contentment with the revelation it 
may yield. It is the common opinion that the 
scientific and the religious modes of interpreting 
Nature are of diverse origin, and in their nature 
essentially antagonized. The . history of human 
thought shows science is really an offshoot from 
religion. I have elsewhere discussed this question 
(see Interpretation of Nature, page 20, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1893). Though a matter 
of much interest, I can not further consider it here 
save to say that the fundamental motives of science 
and religion appear to me to be the same. They 
both seek to penetrate the unknown. 

One of the most effective cures for the appre- 
hension of death is to be found in vigorous out- 
going action. Those who are familiar with savages, 



200 THE INDIVIDUAL 

or with men who have been temporarily restored to 
that primitive state by the hardening life of the sol- 
dier, know that to snch people death has little terror, 
and the fear of it appears not to be present except 
in the moment when action brings it into near view, 
at which time the activity serves to mask the evil. 
When soldiers come nnder fire their shrunken faces 
show at once that the apprehension is upon them, 
but as soon as they are engaged with the enemy 
the activity commonly restores them to their poise. 
It is one of the advantages of all rude and exposed 
life, such as that of the hunter, that in it the man 
wins again his natural adjustment to life and death 
which he is deprived of by his supercivilization. 

It is well to remember that the instinctive fear 
of death is not as our forefathers deemed it, a dread 
of coming to a place of judgment, though that idea 
has added much to the pang. Its source is to be 
looked for in our animal ancestry, where this fear, 
blind and unconscious of its object, was absolutely 
demanded for the fit preservation of the individual. 
As the lower animals can have no understanding of 
death, their apprehension is surely as unreasoning 
as that of children in their early years before there 
is any distinct association of the state of mind 
with bodily harm, much less with death, of which 
they know nothing. It is this long inbred organic 



FEAR AND VALOUR 201 

fear which, inherited by man and added to by the 
knowledge which is his alone, that makes fear of 
death the peculiar evil, one that we should bear 
down as we have to do with so many other of our 
qualities derived from our brutal ancestors. 

As above noted, man cures the primitive fear of 
death where he can by overlaying it with the 
stronger motives of momentary action. His mode 
of life also helps him to the end by giving him a 
well-poised nervous system, one that acts mostly in 
relation to the work he has in hand. This simple 
defence is admirable, but, as we see, inapplicable to 
the life of the higher societies. It can, however, 
be replaced by other and even more effective agents. 
It hardly needs be said that the fear of death is 
utterly selfish, and that where it relates to ourselves 
the most degrading of all terrors. Evidently one of 
the cures for the evil is to be found in the exercise 
of the mind and body in work that distinctly relates 
to the well-being of others. The ordinary occupa- 
tions of life afford for most people who are not af- 
fected with religious apprehensions a suitable balm, 
for the reason that they generally have an altruis- 
tic quality; that curative motive enters into the 
larger part of our activities. If the fear is such 
that these customary activities do not put it aside, 
a further attention to the needs of our fellows will 



202 THE INDIVIDUAL 

surely make good the cure. It is by pushing beyond 
the individual to the kind, by turning our formal life 
out of itself toward others, that the surest relief for 
this inherited evil is to be gained. The remedy is 
ancient and effective. It has been proved by the 
lives of the innumerable saints of many dispensations. 
The method of extinguishing the fear of death 
is as simple as it is beautiful. All of the horror of 
it proceeds from the contemplation of the self. If 
this is escaped, there may remain the mere animal 
avoidance and resistance of the ill, but the sting of 
it will be lacking. The one means of honourably 
extinguishing self-consciousness is by the consecra- 
tion of the thought to interests beyond the self. 
This can take many shapes. With some exceptional 
persons it may be a devotion to purely intellectual 
matters; but with few, if any, does such interest 
become firm enough to completely engage the mind. 
With others it may be a devotion of a religious 
nature, in effect, to a contemplation of God; or it 
may — and best — be a motive to help the fellow-man, 
taking him to heart at once as a brother and as the 
highest type of that whole of which we are a part. 
Looking on the fellow-being as the embodiment of all 
that we know or hope in the way of the future, we 
may in helping him unite all the influences which 
enable us to combat the evils of our individuality. 



CHAPTER X 

THE ATTITUDE OE MAN" TOWARD DEATH 

While it is evident that the lower animals of 
all grades apprehend danger, we can not believe 
that they in any way recognise that they must 
die. To suppose that they can attain to such under- 
standing is to endow them at once with a self- 
consciousness and a reasoning power which evidence 
shows they do not possess. The fear they have is 
like that of a child when it begins to adjust itself to 
the world about it. The little creature is full of 
dreads, but these relate to bodily harm and not to 
annihilation. It is one of the most characteristic 
marks of man's estate that he bears this larger fear, 
one unknown to all the lower life of brute and child. 

So, too, we have noted that man comes to the 
consciousness of death with a vast store of inherited 
capacity for fear. This motive represents the anx- 
iety and caution with which his animal ancestors 
have had each moment to apply to the world about 
203 



204 THE INDIVIDUAL 

them. The motive is the shadow of all the struggle 
involved in the selective processes which have done 
so much to guide our life up the long stairway to 
the plane of humanity. The dominant station to 
which our kind attained, even in its savage state, 
the mutual protection which a society, even the sim- 
plest, affords, quickly served to diminish the need 
of fear for its original uses. It was, however, at 
once applied to the newly discovered danger — that 
of death. 

In facing the risks which confront them the 
brutes trust to their activities of flight or defence. 
They must learn to trust their bodily powers; for 
those that do so most effectively survive, and send 
their motives on to their progeny. But from this 
certain ill of death, which man was the first to see, 
there was evidently no immediate way of escape. 
The only way to deal with it was by the use of the 
constructive imagination, by explaining it in some 
large way. Thus it came about that the sight of 
the dead brought men to look beyond the visible 
and people the unknown with interpretations. 
These at first took on the shapes of the objects 
which had been the teachers of the lowlier life: 
great beasts of mysterious power, malignant foes in 
human form, wild forces of Nature in varied incar- 
nations. Thus there grew up about death as a 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 205 

centre the beginnings of the moral interpretation 
of the universe, at first as embodied fears. 

The advance in the altruistic and philosophical 
motives of men is well though confusedly recorded 
in the gradual development of these early explana- 
tions of the spiritual realm. We see the rude gods 
of the early theogonies gradually borne down by 
the higher creatures which are set above them. 
Generous deities appear, those who look upon the 
lower world in a kindly way. Still the demons, 
these embodiments of the ancient fear, live on in 
their lower plane. They survive long after the 
better understanding of Nature has forced the 
thought of all men from the grosser polytheisms 
to the conception of divine control. Yet, even 
when this end has been substantially obtained, 
when the idea of the supreme, beneficent God is 
established as an article of faith for which every- 
thing is sacrificed, so persistent is the ancient de- 
monology that its fiends have to be kept for the 
torment of mankind. A most curious chapter in 
the history of thought is that in which is written 
the history of the conflict between the teachings of 
Christ and the olden worship of the fearful. Long 
after the religion of perfect love and self-devotion 
gained an apparent control over the minds of men 
the real mastery remained with the demons, those 



206 THE INDIVIDUAL 

brutal conceptions of early man born of his in- 
herited fears. Even now they hold their place in the 
minds of most of those who profess themselves Chris- 
tians. 

Those who have been so fortunate as to have 
been reared in a true Christian faith can have no 
sufficient idea of the torture to which the minds 
of men were subjected by the old-fashioned dis- 
courses on the punishments that after death assail 
all save the few chosen ones. The human fancy has 
ranged far, but nowhere else has it gathered such 
a harvest as in the sulphurous realms. Cruelty is 
a natural motive in men; it came with the vast store 
of good and bad that was sent to us from the lower 
stages of life. All the better influences of society 
worked against it./ The teachings of Christ should 
have banished it from the earth, but for near two 
thousand years these teachings have been made in 
appearance to justify the endless picturings of tor- 
ments upon the immortal bodies of those he sought 
to save. I recall the preachings of a worthy man, 
famous in my boyhood as a great exhorter. I can 
see and hear him even now, after nearly half a 
century, rolling out his story of the torments of 
the doomed, with a drone of sorrow in his voice, 
but with an evident relish for the cruelty that he 
painted amazingly well. Men and women fell down 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 207 

with fear and horror before that terror he forced 
upon them, the terror of what death may open to 
man. For centuries a host of able men have been at 
work perpetuating these brutal ideas throughout the 
civilized world. Can we wonder that, with this end- 
less dwelling on the ancient conceptions of the 
brute and primitive man, cruelty and fear which 
Christianity should have cleared away still cling to 
men? — that the altruistic motives which naturally 
lead them to put aside all personal considerations of 
their fate should still have so small a part in their 
actions? 

One of the best things that can be said of the 
century that is drawing to its close is that it has 
seen the end, or at least the promise of the end, 
of the ancient demon-worship. The physical hell, 
the personal devil, his imps of all degrees, the fiery 
furnaces, and all the other agents of torment are 
passing away from the imaginations of men. There 
is probably not an educated clergyman who believes 
in them. There is scarcely an intelligent congre- 
gation where the preaching that was demanded fifty 
years ago would be tolerated to-clay. The idea of 
suffering for evil done is still firmly rooted in the 
minds of all men of sound moral nature: suffering 
in this or any other world until it has accomplished 
its fit work; but the old conception is now being 



208 THE INDIVIDUAL 

purged from our religion, which it has so long dis- 
graced. 

In considering the reasonable attitude of man 
toward death, I shall for convenience assume that 
the reader believes in a personal immortality. It 
is of no great moment whether he so believes, is 
an agnostic, or holds to a firm conviction that he 
ceases to be as the life of his body is stilled. As a 
matter of fact, the essential difference between these 
three states of mind is of much less account than it 
at first sight appears to be. For the belief of those 
who least doubt immortality is far from being as 
clear and sufficient as it is concerning the things 
they recognise as certain. The professed doubt of 
the agnostic is pretty sure to have a concealed doubt 
in his well-guarded indifference of opinion; while 
the resolute sceptic if he faces the absolute mys- 
tery of the universe — a mystery which, notwith- 
standing all the illumination of knowledge, remains 
essentially unbroken — must confess that immor- 
tality is among the possibilities of the unknown 
realm. 

The first point relating to the attitude of the 
intelligent man toward death which I propose to 
consider concerns the search for further evidence 
of immortality. This inquiry has always had an 
exceeding interest for people of a certain type of 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 209 

mind. They find in the obscure phenomena of 
apparitions, in the statements of persons in the 
mesmeric sleep, and like matters, what seems at first 
sight to be a body of facts, which in olden days 
were taken for absolute verities. Modern inquiry 
has shown that by far the greater part of these 
manifestations may be readily accounted for as the 
result of disturbed mental action, or as mere frauds. 
There remains a fraction of the huge mass of so- 
called evidence, a fraction so small as almost to be 
overshadowed by the doubt arising from the charac- 
ter of the rest, which can not be as yet accounted 
for. The most that can be said for this remnant 
is that it is quite reconcilable with the supposition 
that the dead live much as they have lived on earth, 
and that they may communicate as regards matters 
of no particular importance with the living. 

Against this interesting though utterly frag- 
mentary evidence that goes to show the continuance 
of the individual after death we have to set the 
apparent failure of these revelations to give us any 
knowledge as to matters of importance, which we 
surely ought to obtain from the departed were they 
really the source of these communications. Hardly 
any adult person dies without leaving breaks in his 
action which his successors can not repair for lack 
of some bit of information; yet, so far as I can find, 



210 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the endless seeking for this help has never led to the 
least profit. There is very often the pretence of 
giving such help, but it turns out to be without sub- 
stantial value. 

It is urged by many persons who devote them- 
selves to these matters that we have here facts 
of one sort or another, and as such they can and 
should be made the matter of scientific inquiry. To 
this the men who are trained in scientific methods 
may answer as follows: All true inquiry in the lim- 
ited fields of physical and biologic science has to 
proceed on the assumption that the data which are 
used need no other purging than is required to pro- 
vide against errors of observation. If there be even a 
reasonable probability that the material is falsified, 
the scientific value of the data at once vanishes. 
It may be claimed, however, that the inquiry can be 
so managed as to exclude the doubtful part of the 
evidence, leaving the remnant for use. This is 
easily proposed, but it is by no means easy to accom- 
plish. Taking the case of the most successful 
medium in the history of modern inquiries, we find 
that in her trances she appears often to be con- 
trolled by what purports to be the spirit of a certain 
French physician. While thus controlled she 
speaks English (never French) with a perfect imi- 
tation of the manner and accent of a Frenchman, 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 211 

but without a trace of the Gallicisms which should 
accompany the tones. Moreover, this garrulous im- 
postor was so rash as to give the date and place of 
his birth and something of his history. A search 
showed that no such person had ever lived. Here, 
then, we have a medium who, as she impresses^ every 
one who observed her, is perfectly honest and sin- 
cere, who when in the cataleptic or mesmeric trance 
pours forth volumes of material under such utterly 
confounding conditions as have been just noted. 
What can we expect of truth in the matter which 
comes to us professedly by the counterfeited voice 
of an ancient Frenchman who never existed at all? 
We might as well undertake a topographical survey 
of the land of dreams. 

Thus, while the unprejudiced inquirer is likely 
to be led to a belief that there is some kind of truth 
hidden away in the mass of rubbish that comes from 
the trance state, he is certain to come to the con- 
clusion that there is no evident way in which the 
truth can be so parted from the fiction as to afford 
trustworthy data for scientific inquiry. He is also 
likely to feel that any long exposure to the curious 
influences to which he is subjected in the so-called 
seance has a tendency to blunt those faculties on 
which scientific inquiry depends. To any one ac- 
customed to live in the clean air of truth this atmos- 
15 



212 THE INDIVIDUAL 

phere of deceit which envelops the seance is re- 
volting. 

Therefore I would say to those who seek to ad- 
just their relations with death, give up the ex- 
pectation of gaining this knowledge by means of 
so-called spiritualism. Experience has shown that 
so far there has been no measurable profit won 
in that way. It is doubtful if any like body of en- 
deavour has ever borne so little fruit. It has com- 
manded the devotion of many able men and not a 
few who brought to the task minds well trained in 
the methods of science; but all their skill has 
proved valueless in dealing with the mass of stuff 
which they sought to make the basis of inquiries. 

To a sound-minded person who is accustomed to 
look upon the estate of the departed as one of dig- 
nity there is something very painful in the igno- 
minious presentations of the dead which are made 
on these occasions when they are summoned by the 
medium. A belief in these alleged revelations can 
not in any way lift our conception of a life to come. 
For my own part, good as it would be to go onward 
and upward, I would rather be consigned to noth- 
ingness than to the fatuous state in which some of 
my departed friends would, according to these pres- 
entations, appear to dwell. As for the value of the 
evidence which the mediums have afforded to prove 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 213 

the survival of the individual, it appears to me not 
to be compared with that which is given us by 
our faith, based on our feelings, on our sense of 
what the unknown realm should be in relation to 
that which we know, on the judgment of the ages, 
on the foreseeing of the prophets. None of these 
sources are to be counted as in any way scientific, but 
they are quite as much so as are the revelations of 
spiritualism. Moreover, they are high and clean. 
We can lean upon them without a sense of degra- 
dation, which the other contact entails. 

If we consider the position of man with reference 
to his future we see that it is essentially unprofitable 
for him to trouble himself with matters that lie 
past death. At best, with all his skill in forecast- 
ing, man can not well plan very far beyond the 
tasks of the day. Therefore, the wise of all time 
have been content to leave out of this life all reck- 
onings of the deeds which may be done beyond it. 
Man's concern here is with the charges of this life. 
His hope alone may go beyond it, but it goes there 
with little guidance from knowledge. 

The effect of the knowledge of death was at first 
to turn the thoughts of men with great intensity to 
the fears it naturally aroused. All the timorous 
motives were stimulated to activity. The idea of 
punishment after death, though in a way calculated 



214 THE INDIVIDUAL 

to arouse the moral consciousness, did its work in the 
essentially lower plane of the mind. Then came 
the blessed motive of self-sacrifice in its primitive 
form of martial valour — the primitive shape of that 
divine impulse which was to leaven the lump of hu- 
manity in which it dwells. Gradually this spirit 
gains until it attains its full grandeur in the im- 
mortal words of the dying Sydney, and the like notes 
of self-devotion which have ennobled the world. 
The effect of this motive has been insensibly to 
turn men away from the contemplation of death as 
a personal grief. It has come to be considered in a 
way disgraceful, because cowardly, to set forth even 
to intimate friends any fear of the end that may tor- 
ment the soul. This instinctive suppression of 
the natural dread is a result of the wide diffusion 
of the altruistic impulses. It is akin to the mo- 
tives of decency and modesty which lead men to 
keep a variety of personal concerns quite out of pub- 
lie sight. Such conduct has undoubtedly done much 
to diminish the share of attention which the indi- 
vidual gives to this as to other matters concerning 
his own self. Still this fear abides, although it is 
decently hidden. As far as it concerns the per- 
son himself it is apparently a diminishing feature in 
our lives, but in relation to those who are loved it 
appears to be gaining, so that the aggregate of anx- 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 215 

iety which it induces is probably no less than it was 
of old, though of far higher quality. 

The above-noted change of fear from the hedo- 
nistic to the altruistic form is apparently much 
greater in women than in men. Those who have 
seen persons of both sexes in conditions of trial have 
generally noted that, apart from the mere nervous 
timidities which affect them as they do valiant men 
as well, women are much less actuated by selfish 
fear of death than their seemingly more valorous 
companions. The fact seems to be that the femi- 
nine nature has on the average gone much further 
on the paths of sympathy than has that of men, 
though the limit of this outgoing may be more re- 
stricted. More often it concerns the circle of the 
family or the small society than the state or the 
world, but it is more effective in turning aside the 
ancient dread of the end. 

There are many reasons why the altruistic dread 
of death should be strong, and should grow stronger 
with the extension of the altruistic motives. With 
the development of society the ties between its mem- 
bers grow firmer and more numerous, and those 
with institutions are created, so that the life of a 
strong man becomes an integral part of the lives of 
many. Their departure is likely to make more 
trouble for those who survive than was the case in 



216 THE INDIVIDUAL 

earlier days when, save the few chieftains, no man 
had numerous dependents. In our entangled time 
many a man of no public note has more people 
bound to him by the ties of need and service than 
famous kings of antiquity. It is this care for those 
who are to be left that weighs most upon the minds 
of men. It is so grievous that many of them would 
gladly accept death as the price of perfect and endur- 
ing replacement of the help they now give to those 
for whom they care. 

As a part of this altruistic fear of death which 
is so fostered by the development of society, there 
is a dread of its coming to the beloved. Many per- 
sons — this is particularly the case with women — who 
have almost attained the blessed forgetfulness of 
their own fate, have transferred the ancient terror 
to the fate of children or friends. Herein lies the 
great body of the world's agony, which it is the part 
of the higher knowledge and the feeling that goes 
therewith to cure, even as previous advances in hu- 
man nature have in good part cured the ancient, 
selfish, half -animal fears. Let us see if we can fore- 
cast that future and if we can help its coming. 

We see at once that the fear of death which 
arises from the sense of the need which may befall 
the beloved is in large part due to the conditions of 
society. There is no longer much reason to appre- 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 217 

hend that the death of a man may reduce his family 
to the state of brutal want as regards food and cloth- 
ing. The risk is that they fall in this station to that 
state of penury. Although the fall may entail no 
physical suffering it may bring a degradation which 
involves quite as grave trials. As the world is, sta- 
tion is a very dear possession of those who have it. 
The question is how far can the conditions of our 
social motives and institutions be so modified that 
this danger arising from the death of the strong may 
be minimized. 

Even a cursory examination of the institutions 
of our highly organized societies makes it evident 
that they have gone a little distance on the way 
that insures something more than the protection of 
the poorhouse to those who by death are left with- 
out their natural protectors. The system of life 
insurance, mainly a development of the nineteenth 
century, is by far the most effective of these agents. 
Unhappily the progressive and rapid fall of interest 
on capital is likely to limit, year by year, the protec- 
tive value of this resource as measured in terms of 
labour. Still it bids fair, while the present consti- 
tution of society continues, to remain the most 
effective help against the most care-giving incidents 
of death. To this resource may be added the pro- 
tection which is afforded by the innumerable asso- 



218 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ciations which have for their main object the assist- 
ance of the widow and the orphan. Some of these 
are of ancient origin, and probably had in their be- 
ginning the shelter of their members from oppres- 
sion as their sole object. With the improvement 
of the police system and generally right govern- 
ment of modern times, the main purpose of this 
and other like societies has come to be the relief 
of those who were dependent on their deceased 
brethren. 

The motive of caring for the families of the 
dead finds expression not only in associations formed 
for this purpose, it is becoming common in all 
groups of men who are in any wise connected in 
action or history. In college classes, in the facul- 
ties of our greater schools, among the employees 
of great commercial establishments, and elsewhere 
throughout the complex of activity of our time, the 
sympathetic motive shows its modern development 
in the efforts of the living to carry forward the 
work of the dead, and the living who depended on 
his labour. Almost any kind of a tie, however 
slight, is accepted as a basis of brotherhood and as 
establishing a claim for active help. It is, in a 
word, evident that we are nearing the time when 
one of the gravest reasons for the fear of death will 
in large part disappear in a sympathetic relation 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 219 

which, will insure the families of the dead against 
the degradation of want. 

There are sorely mistaken people who think that 
this work of private beneficence should be replaced 
by some form of government pensions. While 
such a system, if it afforded effective helps pro- 
portional to the station of the unprotected, which 
it surely could not do, might have certain immediate 
advantages, it would, in a larger way, be destruc- 
tive to the sympathetic motive, which is the most 
blessed concomitant of the work that is now done. 
So long as a man gives from his own hand, or even 
from that of a society that is near to him, his act is 
charitable. " It blesses him that gives and him 
that takes " alike. When done by the government 
the act loses all personal quality; it becomes a mere 
mechanical deed. The way to the end is straight- 
forward on the path which has carried us so far: in 
the closer interlacing of all the human relations, 
.especially those which are formed in the ordinary 
duties of life, so that all who toil together shall feel 
that they are brethren, each owing to the other the 
help in trial that men can give. Used in this way 
the incident of death may become, as it should 
be in all affairs, the inspiration to a firmer bond 
between men than any other basis of fellowship 
can afford. 



220 THE INDIVIDUAL 

There is another personal grief that death brings 
which is above the plane of the meaner fears, in fact 
is very human and with a trace of the sympathetic 
motive. This is the sorrow which comes with the 
certainty that one will soon be forgotten by his 
kind, at least on earth. Few know how dear to us 
is this place we hold in the minds of our fellows 
until we consider that a century hence it will be 
only in some chance bit of record that our names 
survive, and that for ninety-nine in a hundred even 
this trifle of a name will be denied. Only one name 
in perhaps a hundred million is known to men after 
the lapse of a thousand years, and these memories 
are but shadows.* 



* This vanishing of men, even where they were persons of 
no small importance, was forced npon my attention by an in- 
stance which illustrates the point in a striking manner. About 
thirty years ago, while looking up the history of New England 
earthquakes, by chance I made the acquaintance of John Win- 
throp Hollisan, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in 
Harvard University in the eighteenth century. I found at once 
that he was a man of power, who played a large part in his 
time ; that he had really founded the science of seismology in 
that he had first applied computative methods to the obser- 
vation of earthquakes; that he had made excellent obser- 
vations on the transit of Venus while on what was perhaps 
the first scientific expedition in this country; that he was a 
Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Governor's 
council, the latter in those days an index of station of no mean 
sort. Furthermore, that from his lectures probably came the 
movement which led to the development of the interest of 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 221 

The strength of this desire for a memory that 
the world must deny ns because we have passed is 
well shown by the form of religion which dominates 
in China, which consists mainly in the worship of 
ancestors. We have here the fullest possible expres- 
sion of an effort to preserve the memory of the 
dead, but the result is futile; it is indeed worse, as 
the effect is an ultra-conservation which ends, as we 
see it ending^n a national and political life, borne 
down by a devotion to a shadowy past. 

The cure for the sorrow that the certainty of 
forgetfulness brings to us is to be found, where 
all other balm of the soul is found, in a more perfect 
devotion to others — in the recognition of the fact 
that we pass that the better may come. They have 
their lives to live as we have had, full, caretaldng 
lives, such as call for the best of their strength, for 
the service of the living: they should know us of the 
silent realm only so far as we may afford them help 
for their dutiful activities. To insist that they keep 

Count Rumford and Benjamin Franklin in physical science. 
Chagrined at never having heard of this master, I sought at 
once to see how singular my ignorance was. I inquired in 
succession of one hundred well-informed persons, including 
all the members of the then faculty of Harvard College, and 
found but three who had any recollection of the name. Yet 
in the society of a college town there is a greater likelihood 
of traditions being preserved than in the ordinary associations 
of men. 



222 THE INDIVIDUAL 

us in mind for our own sake would be to burden and 
not to bless them. 

There are open to us all two other comforts in 
this sense of parting from the memory of men: one 
is that we go on our way along with all who could 
really know us, for that distant memory called fame 
is not memory at all; the other, that the real society 
in which we belong is quite unbroken, it endures for- 
ever. The work that a generation of men do in 
their associated lives is one work. Its motives stay 
with the race. If the men retain their individ- 
uality after death they perhaps continue in some 
kind of interchange of labour with one another. If 
they sleep, they rest with their comrades. 

There is good in this hunger for a memory be- 
yond the grave, for it is part of the great longing 
for companionship which has come to us from the 
lower planes of being, which has indeed been 
steadfastly gaining from the dawn of intelligence. 
It exists because no man can find his best and dear- 
est self within himself, but must seek it in his neigh- 
bour. It is thus a part of the noble mystery of 
friendship. There is evil in it too, for it is the 
basis of that ignoble greed of fame which leads men 
to labour, not that their deeds may be well done and 
helpful, but that the world may long remember they 
once were on it. As a whole, it is an evil that may 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 223 

be cured by contemplating the procession of life 
in all its vastness, marching in its stately, endless 
way across this path of the sun. Whoever makes 
him a clear picture of this will find the impression 
so vast that his personality will blend into it as a 
raindrop in the sea. There will remain to him but 
the sense that he is a part of this infinite splendour. 
The sense of unity with the whole of Nature, 
which is the largest lesson that the naturalist gains 
from his study of the realm, and even more from 
the contemplation of it, is not one of self-abasement 
or of the infinitely small place of his individuality 
in the cosmos; it is rather that he feels the whole 
to be in a way a part of himself. That whereunto 
his mind ranges is his, and that he is free to go, as 
the poet has it, " through all the lands and the seas 
and the depths of the heavens/' There is, indeed, 
a very great difference between the sense of personal 
insignificance which the uninformed beholder of Na- 
ture experiences and that which the devoted student 
enjoys. So long as this maze of action is viewed 
as something foreign to ourselves it can not appear 
other than hostile, as brutal as the sea to the ship- 
wrecked sailor who is fighting for his life in the 
waves. But when we are reconciled to this realm, 
when we feel that we are of it and it is of us in a 
common interchange, when we know that we have 



224 THE INDIVIDUAL 

come from it as a child from its mother's body, all 
is changed; we are no longer as the drowning sailor, 
but as fish of that sea. It matters not that we are 
small, the whole is our own. 

Although the development of the altruistic mo- 
tives has done much to clear away the personal 
trouble of death, it has deepened the distress that 
arises from the parting with the beloved. Among 
primitive people, as among most animals, grief is 
very transitory. It seems, indeed, to have been com- 
monly so among our ancestors of three centuries 
ago, when the widow was to be sought in marriage 
by the grave of her husband. What of sorrow that 
has been taken from our own fate has gone to that 
of those we hold dear, with the result that abiding 
grief is one of the marks of our time. Eeligion in 
its better forms does much to assuage the sorrow by 
elevating the mind of the sufferer to the hope of the 
future, and by reconciling it to the divine will. 
But it has to contend with the ever-increasing capac- 
ity for sorrow which arises from the enlargement 
of the sympathetic motives that marks our time. 
Only the observant know how great is the suffering 
that this causes to the world: could it be measured, 
it would doubtless be found to far outweigh all that is 
entailed by the other sources of pain put together. 
As the evident value of life increases very rapidly 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 225 

with our gains in culture and in the means of high 
enjoyment, the regret for the loss of those who pass 
from it has ever a better basis of reason. The ques- 
tion arises as to the influence which any teachings 
of Nature can have on this emotion. 

"While, at best, knowledge can have but little 
effect in a direct way in controlling the emotions, 
and perhaps least of all in hindering or lessening 
that of grief, there are certain truths concerning 
the history of death which have, when rightly seen, 
a moral splendour which should give them value 
to the sorrowful. First of these is the story, already 
sufficiently told, of the place of death in the scheme 
of life. Whoever comes to see that death is the im- 
memorial sacrifice of the individual to the good of 
the whole, that it is the very foundation of all the 
higher life, has attained an understanding that will 
appeal not only to his reason, but to his emotions as 
well. If he is so fortunate as to go yet further and to 
comprehend in his view the majestic spectacle of 
the ongoing of life, of which the individual is but 
a noble incident, he will have at least the comfort 
which comes from the addition of dignity to grief. 

Though the enlargement of understanding as to 
the place of death in the plan which science affords 
may do something to diminish the personal bitter- 
ness of sorrow, it may in another way add to it. As 



226 THE INDIVIDUAL 

is at once seen, nearly all the deaths that occur, cer- 
tainly ninety-nine per cent of the whole number, 
are to be reckoned as accidental and, in a strict sense, 
unnecessary at the time when the end comes. They 
are really disasters which should be avoidable, and 
doubtless in time will be avoided. It is true that in 
the lower life, where the improvement of the species 
is brought about by exposing large numbers of each 
kind to the chance of death, the resulting selection 
served to advance the grade of the being. Even 
there, however, there is a distinct recognition of a 
dumb sort that this waste is an evil; for at each 
stage of the advance we find the progeny lessened in 
number until, in the higher of our brute kindred, 
even twins are unusual, there being commonly only 
one at a birth, as in man. In place of the thou- 
sands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of young 
which may come from one mother in the lower 
species in order that at most two may attain matu- 
rity, we have a fecundity which in the higher mam- 
mals average less than a score. 

This reduction in the sacrifice rate in the higher 
brutes is a concomitant of the increasing care that 
the parents and the herd can give the young. ' So 
far as it goes it marks the replacement of the an- 
cient formal mechanical methods of control by 
those which come from the sympathies. Although 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 227 

at every step of the process the range and effective- 
ness of mere selection is lessened, the advance of 
life is in no wise diminished. On the contrary, the 
heightened powers of the mind appear to send it up- 
ward with greater speed than it attained before. 
Thus, even in the brutes, we see the beginning of 
the new dispensation in which the higher law of 
sympathy is to take the place of the lower automatic 
control, which was fit enough where it gave no pain. 

When we come to the primitive estate of man we 
find that the number of the young is still further 
reduced from its average among the higher Mam- 
malia. Though variable, the average is probably 
not over half a dozen. Moreover, the influence of 
natural selection, which has been long diminishing, 
still further lessens with the increased parental and 
social care. Something of the rude work of the sur- 
vival of the fittest holds on in the savage tribe. 
There is indeed a painful remnant of it in the high- 
est civilization, but it evidently ceases to have value 
in shaping the destinies of the kind. It remains as 
a mere remnant, little more serviceable than many 
parts of our body — such as the vermiform appendix 
of the cascum — fit only to be the seat of disease, and 
a way to unprofitable, because untimely, death. 

Thus, from the point of view of the naturalist 

as well as from that of the moral economist, pre- 
16 



228 THE INDIVIDUAL 

mature death is to be regarded as a great evil, as 
the sorest tax from which man suffers in his present 
state — the sorer for the fact that, unlike death, at 
the end of the appointed time, it is remediable: in 
large measure at once, almost, though not perhaps 
in its entirety, in the foreseeable future. 

There are those who will doubt the probability 
of much reducing the death rate, and others who 
for various reasons will question the advantage of 
changing the present conditions. As for the doubt 
of our ability to diminish the present hideous waste 
of youthful lives, we have only to look to the dif- 
ference in the longevity of different families and 
classes of any society. Or, going further, to the 
domesticated animals, we may note how with appro- 
priate care the young of our cattle and horses are so 
free from danger of death before maturity that the 
owner has hardly to reckon on loss in this time. 
For all the care man has had he has never begun to 
attain the effective longevity of his domesticated ani- 
mals. He sorely needs a herdsman's care. It is evi- 
dent that he can not have it from without; it is un- 
reasonable to suppose that the reproduction of his 
species among its higher members can ever be 
brought under the control of a master, as it is in the 
case of our cattle. The care must come from the 
understanding and the higher conscience of the indi- 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 229 

vidual, from a personal care that looks far beyond 
the present to the good of generations yet to be. We 
need a form of the moral sense, based on what our 
modern knowledge of inheritance has given us — a 
sense that to bring a human being into the world 
without a fair assurance that it may have a sound 
body and mind is a crime. As to those who are too 
low in nature to feel and obey this motive, society 
has the same rights that it has with other malefac- 
tors, the right to prevent those actions which are 
destructive to the higher interests. 

We can not afford here to concern ourselves with 
the means whereby the blood of our societies may 
be purified so that the vast part of premature death 
which is due to pollution may be avoided, nor can 
we consider the better hygienic control which ex- 
perience has shown can do so much to stamp out 
maladies which once were allowed to go unhin- 
dered on their ways. It may, however, be said that 
even in this beginning of the noble service of pre- 
ventive medicine a perfectly controlled community 
could be at once protected from nearly all those 
noninherited diseases which ravage mankind. If 
such a community were made up of families free 
from the tendency to a certain limited number of 
diseases, there is no reason why nearly all its mem- 
bers should not attain to old age. There is no other 



230 THE INDIVIDUAL 

field for the exercise of a wise philanthropy so good 
as this, no other cause so deserving of help as this, 
which looks to the lessening of the greatest bur- 
dens our kind has to bear. 

There is another side of the evil of premature 
death which, though well known, is too often over- 
looked. This is the vast economic loss which it 
entails. It is easily seen that the most expensive 
product of society is its youth. If we take the 
youths of twenty in any association and reckon their 
cost in terms of labour alone, we shall find that by 
far the greater part of the earnings of the people 
has gone to their rearing. It is likely, indeed, if we 
could reckon in addition to this investment the con- 
tingent value of their lives in terms of mere money, 
the total would far exceed that of all the capital of 
all sorts which has been accumulated by centuries of 
labour. Yet of this precious product of our so- 
cieties we lose by avoidable death far more than one 
half, pay it as a tax on our stupidity, ignorance, or 
lack of organizing capacity. 

Those who contend against the view that prema- 
ture death is the exceeding evil which I hold it to 
be, may contend that it has advantages in that it in 
a way maintains something of the good of the old 
selective processes: that when it comes in war it 
affords inspiring examples of self-devotion; and, fur- 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 231 

ther, that there is no effective way in which its 
ravages can be diminished without an interference 
with the rights of the individual such as would en- 
tail even greater evils than those we sought to re- 
move. In a word, that we better suffer and sorrow 
on, getting what light we can from above, until in 
some way we attain to a new dispensation. Sorrow 
and suffering has been the lot of man from the time 
he came to see into the deeps. He has grown by his 
trials, he has yet to profit by them. 

So far as the plea of the laissez alter philosophers 
has a foundation, it rests in the legitimate assump- 
tion that man has not yet escaped from the state 
where the control of his destinies was in the hands 
of the ancient brutal forces. The contention that 
the selective processes are of value in society is true 
only so far as sympathetic rational care has not 
replaced them. No doubt many weaklings die in 
youth to the profit of the race. Probably a greater 
number, who would perish were the process of selec- 
tion in full activity, survive to breed their infirmities. 
It should be obvious that we can not expect to have 
in the same society, working coincidently, the ancient 
selective action and the sympathetic motives which 
had gone far to displace it even in the higher brutes. 
Clearly the part of man is to do his work in the way 
of his kind, rationally, with the large understanding 



232 THE INDIVIDUAL 

with which he has been blessed. It is not for him 
to leave any part of his task to the control of the 
laws that have ceased to work for him, or can. no 
longer fitly help in his task. 

The idea that the death of the young under any 
circumstances can be other than calamitous, that it 
should not be fought against by all the agents that 
we can bring to bear, finds its only real support 
among those who hold to the notion that war is a 
help to the better motives of man. Their conten- 
tions are that the trials of the march and battle 
develop the qualities of self-devotion, obedience, and 
valour in a way that no other kind of activity can 
accomplish, and that the price that we pay for these 
gains in the occasional sacrifice of numbers of our 
youth, though to be deplored, is no more than we 
should be willing to give for the precious return. 
They indignantly ask of those who are for peace 
whether they are willing to purchase it at the cost 
of all the hardy virtues and noble devotions which 
uplift our race, and which indeed make life really 
worth living. 

The error of these unobservant persons is one 
familiar to all those who have to do with the his- 
tory of inquiry in any field. It is due to the com- 
mon mistake of supposing that the qualities dis- 
played in an action are derived from the action it- 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 233 

self, when, in fact, they are only exhibited and not 
at all created in the particular activity. A man 
does not derive the muscular strength he may use in 
battle from the fight; he has probably gained it in 
some kind of profitable labour. His courage, his 
obedience, his endurance in the trials of a campaign 
are not bred in it; they are the product of his whole 
life and that of his ancestors, who gave him his na- 
ture and nurture. Men must have in them all the 
qualities that go to make the soldier before they 
approach the business of war. All that discipline 
does is to give a certain mechanical readiness for 
duty; it makes practically nothing of the soldierly 
quality. 

Those who doubt the statements just made 
should look over the history of European states. 
They would see that the most soldierly people of 
that continent are the Swiss, who for a hundred 
years have hardly felt the touch of war. Yet judges 
of what makes the fighting man feel that at any 
moment they would give an admirable account of 
themselves. Their martial nature, born of national 
independence and hard, patient labour, with a sim- 
ple military training to give it embodiment is 
enough to deter the greedy folk about them from 
disturbing their repose. Just beside Switzerland, 
that has bred its soldiers in enduring peace, we see 



234 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the French, a folk of endless warring, where hardly 
a generation in a thousand years but has known 
campaigns. We hear from them the martial note in 
their worship of arms and the glory that arms may 
win; in their trust to the test of battle for the de- 
cision of all important personal and national matters. 
Surely if a people gain in the higher qualities by 
the uses of war, we should find the profit here: for 
rarely if ever before in the history of man has there 
been so admirable a chance for this schooling to do 
its work. What do we find as the result of this age- 
long process of developing the higher virtues: cour- 
age, high-mindedness, patriotic self-devotion, the 
things for which we pay with the lives of our best 
youth? No answer need be made to the inquiry. 
Look at the other so-called Latin peoples. They 
are the product of a militarism such as northern 
Europe did not know until relatively modern times, 
and which our own English-speaking people have 
never been subjected to. What we find there con- 
firms the judgment that, so far from developing 
in a people the qualities of the soldier, the military 
habit in some way hinders the growth of those quali- 
ties. The way in which it does it is plain. 

In noting the fact that natural selection, because 
of the enlarged sympathies and the effective help 
they afford to men, has almost ceased to act in hu- 



THE ATTITUDE OF MAN TOWARD DEATH 235 

man society, the reservation should have been made 
that in returning to the primitive conditions of war 
man once again encounters those conditions which 
act there in a peculiar and most effective way. For 
military service we necessarily take from our society 
the best of its young men, the able-bodied and the 
able-minded of their generation. The chance is 
great that they fall in battle, it is even more probable 
that they die of diseases from which they would have 
been protected if they remained within the shelter of 
their civilization. Just so far as this business of war 
goes, whether it be a thousand lives or a million 
that are taken from the folk, the result is the im- 
poverishment of the nation's blood. In another gen- 
eration there will perhaps be no fewer people, for 
all the losses that war has inflicted, but the quality 
of the folk will inevitably be lowered. Keep up 
this process for a few generations and the in- 
evitable result will be the creation of such a de- 
cadent folk as we find among the nations who have 
most amply made the hideous experiment of breed- 
ing nobility by sending their best to premature 
death. 

This is hardly the place to extend the considera- 
tion of the evils of war to the full extent of the 
matter, but we can not forbear to note that in the 
present state of even the best races the proportion 



236 THE INDIVIDUAL 

of the population that is fit for leadership is small; 
probably not more than one in fifty of the men 
have any distinct capacity for guiding in the move- 
ments of social or economic advance. Yet in mod- 
ern war these are the men who must be taken to do 
its difficult and dangerous tasks. The mere burly 
soldier will no longer serve for the purpose as he 
did of old. The result is that society loses its 
profitable saving remnant. It suffers as would a 
herd if the master were insane enough to select the 
best for the butcher. 

These considerations point clearly to the conclu- 
sion that the fancy that war is necessary to main- 
tain the ideals of manly courage is as mistaken as 
is the notion that the system of the duel was re- 
quired to uphold the sense of personal honour. 
There is good reason to believe that those societies 
which have abandoned the latter evil custom have 
gained in the very qualities that it was supposed to 
foster. There is no room for doubting that a century 
of absolute peace would find us far better provided 
with all the so-called military virtues than we would 
be if we had followed the example of France in our 
worship of the war motives. 

The sparing of woe which would be brought 
about by the cessation of war can scarcely be im- 
agined. In our civil war over half a million men 



THE ATTITUDE OP MAN TOWARD DEATH 237 

went down to premature death. This means that 
some millions of people were stricken. To this day 
every community bears the impress of that sorrow; 
it will take half a century to bury that vast burden. 
Even the trifling conflict between the United States 
and Spain has meant anguish to a great host on 
the two sides of the sea. We do not hear this grief, 
but it is as real as the noisy exultation of the victors; 
it will outlast their triumph. 

Whoever would mitigate the supreme evil of 
untimely death, whoever would give to this natu- 
rally glad world a chance to win its happiness, can 
not do better service than to contend against war. 
Let him concede that it is necessary to keep our 
youths ready to make the supreme sacrifice of life 
for the good of their people, he can afford to await 
those seldom occasions when war is fully justified. 
If we can but spare the evitable wars — those which 
could be avoided if all decent men saw the measure 
of the iniquity — the world would be safely enough 
at peace. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE RELATION OF SOCIETY TO DEATH 

We have already noted certain evident ways in 
which societies, beginning with those of the lower 
species and afterward with those of man, have or- 
dered their life with a view to avoiding so much of 
the evil of death as might by any contrivance be 
put aside. In fact, the main result of all these asso- 
ciations has been to provide against the ills which 
arise from the brevity of life of their individual 
members. Although in organized human societies 
we have a host of arrangements which are designed 
to obviate the evils of death, little consideration has 
been given to the problem as a whole. There has 
been no effort to organize the various endeavours so 
that the state should be able to husband its re- 
sources of life in the most effective manner. I pro- 
pose in this chapter to consider what might be done 
in a society of an ideal form, yet not altogether be- 
yond the limits of reasonable expectation, to attain 
this end. 

238 



THE RELATION OF SOCIETY TO DEATH 239 

Assuming, as we must, that in any well-organized 
society the normal individuals are to retain the full 
measure of their freedom, as distinguished from 
license, which the best existing eystems afford, and 
that the unit of the association is to be the family, 
the question is, "What can we hope, by means of pub- 
lic opinion, or the law, to accomplish in the way of 
further diminishing the evils that death entails? I 
place public opinion first among these sources of 
remedy, for the reason that there alone can we hope 
to lay the foundations of any such improvements 
as we would bring about. It is toward this better- 
ment of public opinion as regards the evils of death 
that we need to make the most strenuous endeavours, 
for it is just there that we find an assemblage of 
prejudices and miscomprehensions which go far to 
block all progress on the way we would go. These 
obstacles need first to be considered. Though in 
their nature simple, their importance is such as to 
demand some analysis. This can be best obtained 
from a brief history of them. 

It is easy to see that the present state of mind 
of most men as to the place of death is shaped, as is 
naturally the case, not on any rational considera- 
tion of the matter, but on the sympathies. Very 
few persons have been brought to see that death at 
the fit time is essential to the great order, that it is 



240 THE INDIVIDUAL 

beneficent; and that it is death at the nnfit time, 
and the disability that leads to it, which is the evil 
to be contended against. To most people illness 
which is out of the normal order is but a matter of 
course, while death, coming even at the time when 
it is due, is taken to be a visitation of an inscrutable 
Providence. To better this opinion we should make 
it clear what the economic results of premature death 
and the illness which commonly precedes it really 
are. It should, as before noted, be made plain to 
all the generations that the tax which is thus im- 
posed is, from the point of view of money alone, 
the sorest paid by man. When we consider that, 
owing to premature death and enfeeblement, we 
win on the average less than one half the service 
we have a right to expect from men who attain 
an adult age, and that only a small proportion of 
those who are born come to their full promise of 
usefulness; that quite one tenth of the living in our 
best-organized societies are, from disability, a bur- 
den on the others, it becomes clear that the tax is, 
in its aggregate, greater than all the others we pay 
for the privileges of our associations. "We are, in- 
deed, so stripped by it that less than half the normal 
earnings of those who remain in life and health are 
left to them. 

As to the way in which this idea of economic 



, THE RELATION OF SOCIETY TO DEATH 241 

value of life may be borne in on our people^ it is 
not easy to prescribe. It may, however, be sug- 
gested that it should enter into the teaching con- 
cerning the duties and place of the citizen, which has 
fairly established itself in our schools. At first 
sight it may seem an unworthy thing to estimate 
life and health in terms of mere money value. This, 
too, is but a prejudice derived from a short-sighted 
way of looking at things, for this measurement is 
but a direct stating of a loss than can be adequately 
expressed in no other manner. Properly set forth, 
this idea of the value of the individual to his as- 
sociates in action is indeed noble, for it clearly 
presents the relation of the members of a society to 
one another. It accentuates the truth that no man 
is in for himself, or even for those who know him; 
that he is in possession of his society, of his state, and 
of mankind; that with his illness or death all his 
fellow-men are poorer than they would be if he re- 
mained vigorous in the fellowship. In fact, there is 
no surer way to an extension of the altruistic mo- 
tives in human society than by the development of 
this conception as to the economic bond between 
men. 

Next in order, if, indeed, it should not have the 
first place, is the need of a better knowledge as to 
the essential interdependence of the generations. 



242 THE INDIVIDUAL 

The Occidental state of mind, that which character- 
izes all the vigorous folk of the world, leads to an 
exceeding magnification of the individual. He feels 
it in an excessive and irrational degree of isolation 
and power to act for himself. He looks neither 
backward nor forward upon the tide of life of which 
his personality is but the momentary accident. 
There can be no question that this intense individ- 
uality of the Western Aryan has had great value. 
It has given us men endowed with rare vigour in ac- 
tion. The time has, however, come for another and 
wider view as to the true station of the person in the 
generational chain. Our knowledge as to the facts 
of organic succession makes it plain that men, while 
they may well retain all the majestic sense of origi- 
nating power, need more and more to perceive that 
their largest function is as trustees of life. They 
receive the store of gains their predecessors have 
won; they take with this wealth an obligation to 
transmit it unimpared because of their care, and 
augmented by the additions which they may be able 
to make to it. When these potent truths become 
the common property of men, as they surely will, 
we may expect in the masses, as we now find in 
the considerate individual of even general knowl- 
edge, a sense that man is not here for himself, but 
that he is a part of a vast order which he is bound 



THE RELATION OP SOCIETY TO DEATH 243 

to serve; that his individuality has dignity and 
beauty only in so far as it recognises this order and 
intelligently shares in the work thereof. 

The effect of this view as to the station of the 
individual human being will be in many ways help- 
ful in bettering the attitude of men toward death. 
It will elevate their conception as to the place of 
this event by showing them how 1 it is the sacrifice 
which we each pay for the good of all, because mor- 
tality is the price set on advance in the scale of life. 
The main gain, however, will most likely come from 
the increased sense of responsibility to the life of 
the unborn generations for the effective transmis- 
sion of the store that has been committed to their 
keeping. Much of this forethoughtful state of 
mind has always existed among peoples who have 
won their way above the most primitive estate; but 
it has commonly related to public affairs only, to the 
safety of distinguished institutions, families, or the 
state. It has rarely been recognised that each is in 
himself a commonwealth of inconceivable antiquity 
and endowed with a peculiar dignity. That all the 
worth which institutions have is but the harvest of 
individual lives. When men come to see them- 
selves as their natural history portrays them, they 
will surely judge this duty as transmitters to be the 

most sacred of their obligations and recognise the 
17 



244 THE INDIVIDUAL 

seriousness of the command to take account of the 
good and evil which they may hand on to their suc- 
cessors. 

Already we begin to perceive some of the effects 
of this modern view as to the place of man as a 
transmitter. It has been my good chance to see, 
for more than the term which we count as a genera- 
tion, year by year a great number of youths of the 
better sort in a way that has shown me much as to 
their motives. Within this time the gain in the 
seriousness with which these young men look upon 
the question of their duty by those who are to come 
after them has been very evident. Without any 
abatement in the joyful motive with which youth 
should always face the world, they are evidently 
affected by the bettered sense of what their lives 
may be made to mean. It is on such gains as these 
that we must hope to found the larger understand- 
ing of men as to the place of death and the adjust- 
ments of action we should make with reference to it. 

In the new conceptions of duty concerning death 
we may expect to find a clearer sense of the impor- 
tance of so arranging the life of the individual that 
the society of which he forms a part may obtain 
the full value that he has to give. Although the 
world in a blind kind of a way may be said to be 
ever on the watch for persons of highly distin- 



THE RELATION OF SOCIETY TO DEATH 245 

guished capacity, there is no recognition of the fact 
that nearly all persons of sound mind, and some as 
well who are not so, are, because of the range of their 
individuality, endowed with ability which might be, 
but rarely is, turned to profitable account. It is, 
indeed, one of the greatest evils of the common- 
place way of looking at things that we instinctively 
consider people as all alike, until here and there one 
appears who is strong enough to prove that he is 
exceptional. When we come to see that this indi- 
vidual person is the temporary manifestations of an 
invisible procession which has marched on through 
the ages; when we recognise that this unique em- 
bodiment has never been before and can never be 
again on this earth, that when it parts from us we 
lose a combination of qualities which can never be 
repeated, then we may hope adequately to begin 
the greatest work of mankind, that of caring for it- 
self in each of its incarnations. 

There is another aspect of the relations of so- 
ciety to death which is to be found in the rites and 
observances concerning the dead. From the earliest 
condition of man we have the custom of caring for 
the body of the departed. In fact, this care may be 
regarded as one of the distinguishing features of our 
kind. There is no other formal relation to our 
fellows which is more universal or has been more 



246 THE INDIVIDUAL 

sanctified, none that has varied so little in the 
course of our advance from the primitive estate. 
There is good reason for the steadfastness of this 
relation, for it is founded on an instinctive sense of 
the value and permanence of the individual to him- 
self and to his fellows. Whether he believe in the 
doctrine of a personal conscious immortality or not, 
no discerning person can doubt that this recognition 
of the dead is good. Yet he may well protest 
against certain of the ways in which the dead are 
made to weigh upon the living. 

The most serious of the burdens which our cus- 
toms require that the living shall bear because of 
the dead is that of appointed mourning. The pas- 
sage of the beloved should and always will, while 
the best part of man survives, arouse sorrow. It 
should, however, be seen that this sorrow is 'not in 
itself good; that it is but a mark of human imper- 
fection. It should not be fostered. The com- 
mand should be to put it aside, giving all the means 
that is commonly spent on it to the better care of the 
living, leaving good memory alone to be the monu- 
ment of the departed. As it is, there is a prevailing 
opinion that grief, even when it leads to the disability 
of the bereaved, is a fit sacrifice to the beloved dead. 

There is another evil in the existing customs of 
society concerning death which leads to an exces- 



THE RELATION OP SOCIETY TO DEATH 247 

sive expenditure of money in idly commemorating 
the departed. There is in every heart a natural de- 
sire to be remembered. To most people the inevita- 
ble forgetfulness which comes quickly to all save the 
rarer men seems a' large part of the curse that death 
is to bring to them. Even the best of us, when 
we examine the sources of our satisfaction, find that 
they in large part consist in the notice that others 
take of our presence in the world. If we play the 
hermit, there is most likely the satisfaction that as 
hermit we are noteworthy by our absence from the 
throng. So when we think of forgetfulness on our 
own part or that of those we love we shrink from it 
in a good and natural way. There are, indeed, few 
sides of our many-faced human quality more pathet- 
ically noble than this. But, like much else of our 
good qualities, it is not yet in its best showing. We 
do well to have our dead or ourselves commemorated; 
but we do not seek the perpetuation in the fit way 
when we display a mere name on a monument, how- 
ever much a work of art it may be. The essential 
quality of a human being is in its activities, and not 
in its name, or even in its mere form. Yet we persist 
at a vast expense in recording these features of the 
dead. In many communities the cost of funeral 
monuments much exceeds what is spent on school- 
houses. There are no trustworthy statistics on this 



248 THE INDIVIDUAL 

matter, but from somewhat careful observations 
made at three widely separated points in this coun- 
try, I have been led to the conclusion that the cost of 
unnecessary and generally reprehensible monuments 
to the dead considerably exceeds that of all the 
investments of our educational system. 

A proper understanding of the nature of an in- 
dividual man makes it clear that the only suitable 
monument is some beneficent action done in his 
name. All of his quality while living — that, in- 
deed, which made him alive — depended on his ac- 
tions, the effective part of them, in relation to his 
fellow-beings. All that by any possibility can en- 
dure on this earth are his fruitful deeds. If he 
has been a profitable member of the brotherhood, 
his influence will flow right on in the stream of en- 
deavour in which his drop has been merged — the 
stream which nourishes all life. If we should seek 
for our beloved, or for ourselves, some shadow of a 
place among men after the time of going, the only 
fit way to do so is by well-continued activities or in- 
stitutions which we may set in motion, such as men 
may see to be good and judge therefrom of those 
thus commemorated. The variety of these monu- 
mental activities is great. There are any number 
of little beneficences which would cost less than 
the average monuments in our cemeteries, yet would 



THE RELATION OF SOCIETY TO DEATH 219 

serve to enrich our communities. A shapely drink- 
ing place by the wayside, a seat that commands a 
pleasing landscape, cost but little more than the 
cheapest of the vain headstones that mark the place 
of the dust. A bit of park ground or a scholarship 
in a school are less expensive than any one of a 
thousand monuments such as vainly seek to attest 
the virtues of the dead in our great burial places. 
A wise use of the money expended in a single ceme- 
tery well known to me, would enrich the community 
in which it lies with scores of precious institutions, 
making it the wealthiest in resources for the helping 
of man of any society the world has ever known. 

Even for the sorry purpose of mere fame this sac- 
rifice of wealth upon the grave is futile: it gives, at 
most, the bare letters of a name. To persons of 
true culture it is as hateful as the simple burial 
places of earlier times with their plain tablets^ 
are pleasing. A mile or so beyond the cemetery 
where the wealth of a great city has been lavished in 
competition for a vain notice of its dead, there is a 
little field dotted over with the slate headstones 
such as were in use in the earlier centuries. In pro- 
portion to the number who rest in these neighbouring 
fields the cost is perhaps as a hundred to one. So, 
too, is the pleasure of the discerning eye, but the 
advantage is with the unaffected, ancient place. 



250 THE INDIVIDUAL 

When society comes to understand itself as the 
present order of man; when it sees that the indi- 
viduals which compose it are but the temporary in- 
carnations of the spirit of the kind — as individuals 
infinitely important, yet to the stream only as the 
drops that melt into it — we may hope to see an end 
of this clamorous endeavour to gain a brief memory 
where forgetfulness is inevitable. When this stage 
of thought is attained in the associations of men 
we may reckon on a truer estimate of the place of 
the person in this world. 

A proper understanding of the problem of our 
individuality in relation to society — to our race — 
shows us that we should give up the impossible and 
delusive ambition to be known of all men, and limit 
our desires of this sort to the true fellows of our life, 
those who march near us in the great procession. 
This view, however, is but the counterpart of the 
other understanding, that our individual lives are 
but as heart-' beats of the greater body of life, for 
the sake of which we came to be, and for the sake 
of which we are to pass away. Our share of the life 
of this whole is as real as, though it be other than that 
we have with our comrades. In the personal life it is 
a happy immediate interchange with the kinsman. 
In the race life it is pure devotion where we may fitly 
seek no recognition, for such can not be given us. 



CHAPTER XII 

BELATI0N OF PAEENT TO CHILD 

The question may well be asked as to the extent 
to which the new doctrine concerning the nature of 
individuality enforced by modern science is to affect 
our view of kinship to those with whom we are near- 
ly related in blood. It is evident that at present the 
principal moral bond of our families and much of 
the beliefs that unite men of allied races rest upon 
the assumption that the child is essentially a reincar- 
nation of the parent, and that the likeness between 
the members of the same race, even where consan- 
guinity can not be proved, is relatively close. If 
we are to adopt the view that the individual of 
our kind is the embodiment of the successes achieved 
in an inconceivably numerous ancestry, of which 
probably not the hundred-thousandth part had at- 
tained the form of man, can we continue to attach 
any considerable value to relationships that of old 
appeared to be supremely important? If, in a word, 
our child owes to our individually acquired quality 

251 



252 THE INDIVIDUAL 

perhaps not more than the millionth part of what it 
possesses, and has to credit the rest of the sum to a 
series of ancestors extending back to the dawn of 
life, is there any substantial basis for believing it to 
be our child in any full sense of the word? 

Before answering the above-noted question it 
may be well to consider that the ancient view as to 
the bodily and spiritual relations between parent and 
child has evidently been long undergoing a change 
which has distinctly altered the import of the bond. 
Among the ancient Hebrews we find men longing 
for children with a feeling that in them they were in 
an actual way to live again. The early literature 
of our own race is full of allusions that show a like 
though less intense form of the same motive. In 
our own day we rarely catch this note. It seems as 
if the widening of the love of our kind had lessened 
the olden longing for issue. There are reasons for 
believing that the new view as to the conditions of 
inheritance is not likely further to diminish the 
sense of our identification with our kindred; it may, 
indeed, rather serve to enhance it. These reasons 
may be briefly stated as follows: 

While it is true that if we could analyze the vast 
body of anatomical, physiological, and mental parts 
and qualities that go to make up a man, we should 
very likely find that while not the ten-millionth of 



RELATION OF PARENT TO CHILD 253 

the whole was due to the individual life of his im- 
mediate parents, that part of the life which was 
transmitted at birth, it by no means follows that the 
relative value of the parental and remoter contribu- 
tions is in anything like this disproportion. If we 
could make the fancied analysis, we certainly should 
find that the greater part of what we are is deter- 
mined by the laws and conditions of the inorganic 
materials which are the basis of our frames. Of the 
organic results achieved in our bodies practically all 
were shaped and sealed in their form before man 
was. All that has been won to our bodily part by all 
the generations of our species is a few details of pro- 
portion and hue, together with some lesser peculiari- 
ties, such as the shape and distribution of the hair. 
It is in the intellectual parts that the experience of 
the human progenitors has had determining value. 
The primitive emotions, such as hate, fear, greed, 
etc., were shaped in the life below mankind. It is 
probable that the aesthetic motive took its form in 
the prehuman stages of our development. But the 
reasoning power in man has so greatly qualified 
these motives that they in character widely differ 
from that which existed in the lower realm. Thus, 
while there is a real basis of sympathy between man 
and the lower animals — one that grows firmer as we 
ascend in the scale of being — within our own spe- 



254 THE INDIVIDUAL 

cies the kinship of the individuals as measured by 
the identities of the common nature is vastly nearer 
than with any of the lower animals. The nearness 
of men to one another is not exaggerated by any of 
the phrases that are commonly applied to it: in 
truth, we lack words wherewith to set forth the full 
measure of the bond which links the most widely 
parted men to one another. Between their species 
and the nearest of the brutes there is an interval fit 
to be compared with the spaces between the planets. 
There can be no doubt that modern science has 
strengthened the bond that links men together and 
effectively separated them as regards intellectual 
kinship from the brutes. 

The bond that links all men together is the 
stronger the nearer they are to one another in the 
generational succession, for with each step in that 
approach the likeness of Nature on which sympathy 
rests is enhanced. The men of our own race prop- 
erly claim our affection in larger measure than those 
of other races, for the reason that we instinctively 
comprehend them as we can not those of alien blood 
and motive. The fellow-citizens of our common- 
wealth, if they be really such, are closer to us than 
our kindred beyond the seas, because of the social 
and political motives we share with them. Our 
cousins and other recognised members of our fami- 



RELATION OF PARENT TO CHILD 255 

lies are nearer yet, for the links of common and dear 
memories. The closest of all these relations, be- 
cause it brings with it by far the surest basis of sym- 
pathetic understanding, is that which ties parent to 
child, or brothers and sisters to one another. 

So far as the inheritances of the body are con- 
cerned, our modern science clearly tends to break 
down the ancient notion as to the relations of men 
to their progeny. We now see that our successors 
take their shape in a measurably small share from 
ourselves. Of the qualities due to the personal ac- 
tivities of their progenitors they probably receive 
nothing whatever. As regards the mental capacities 
of their immediate ancestors, which depend upon 
culture and accomplishment, it is likely that nothing 
is passed on. A child is therefore vastly more the 
offspring of its race, or rather, we should say, of its 
realm, than of those individuals to whom it imme- 
diately owes its life. That this statement is true is 
endlessly shown us by the failure of great men to 
transmit their qualities to their children. There 
are, it is true, families that send us from generation 
to generation a measure of strength that appears to 
inhere in their stock; but it is most rare that this 
stream of power flows in identical channels. In the 
light of our knowledge concerning the nature of 
inheritance we can see why this should be as it is, 



256 THE INDIVIDUAL 

for each child combines in itself the hosts of tend- 
encies that exist in each of its parents, and the 
equation of these inconceivably numerous factors 
could only by the rarest chance be such as to make 
the child perfectly resemble either parent. The 
same conditions which in the formation of the body 
lead to the endless diversification of its shape in like 
manner lead to an equal or greater diversification of 
the mind. It is, in a word, clear that nearly all of 
what is transmitted from ourselves to our offspring 
comes from that common store of life upon which all 
our race or gens draws for its share of good or ill. 

At first sight the fact that our descendants take 
by process of birth so little of the qualities which we 
recognise as most clearly our own, appears greatly to 
limit the conception of our kinship with them and 
our responsibility for their conduct. This is, how- 
ever, a mistaken view of the situation, as will appear 
on a little examination of the matter. It is evident 
that every child of birth is a blending of the host 
of impulses which, revealed or hidden, existed in its 
parents. What was separately in their persons is 
in union and interaction in his own. By far the 
greater part of these inheritances are organic, and as 
such quite beyond the limited field of consciousness. 
From the interaction of the parental transmissions 
the new life is shaped. So far as these inheritances 



RELATION OF PARENT TO CHILD 257 

lie in the organic field they can be but little influ- 
enced by the action of the parent: yet certain dis- 
eases acquired by them may be transmitted directly 
or in consequent maladies to their children. Vari- 
ous conditions of body due to good or bad habits may 
vitally affect the physical state of the offspring. It 
appears, for instance, quite probable that a predis- 
position to drunkenness curses the children of an 
inebriate, and that it is due in some measure to the 
indulgence of the parent in that vice. It is not 
necessary to extend these considerations, for it is 
evident that in many ways the actions of the parent 
may serve their progeny for good or ill. 

Our information concerning heredity does not 
enable us to fix with any certainty the bounds of the 
effect of parental habits on the offspring. It is, 
however, certain that any habits injurious to the 
body or the mind act to lower the quality of the off- 
spring, to lessen its share of the race store, and most 
likely to give it a tendency to the same evil doing. 
If there were no other reason save that we are the 
keepers of this ancestral quality which goes on 
through us to our descendants, we would still have a 
foundation for feeling that they are peculiarly our 
own. But this is only a small part of the basis on 
which rests our love for our children or theirs for us : 
a greater is to be found in the understanding that in 



258 THE INDIVIDUAL 

our child there are united two streams of tendencies, 
one dear to us because it is personally our own, and 
another that should be no less dear because it is de- 
rived from the chosen companion. Because of our 
scant knowledge of heredity we can not yet win 
what our successors surely will from this modern 
conception of the parental relation. Still, this 
double kinship, even in the simple and limited ways 
in which men of all kinds have understood it, is a 
most real basis for parental affection. 

The surest foundation on which the love of par- 
ent for child can rest is that which comes from the 
care that is devoted to its education. Men are by 
nature care-takers, and all they give of devotion, 
even to inanimate things, brings with it a rewarding 
movement of the sympathies. Much of this sympa- 
thetic movement will be aroused even if the child 
cared for is bound to us by no more than the common 
bond of humanity, so that childless people do well 
to rear the children of others. It is, however, only 
when the infant is our own, when we know that all 
its motives have been a part of our individuality or 
of the other whom we have adopted into our life, 
that the affection attains its perfect form. Then 
our help is most effective, for it is given with ample 
knowledge drawn from our own experience. "We, 
then, are in a way living our lives over again with 



RELATION OF PARENT TO CHILD 259 

our better selves for a mentor. We are thus in the 
most godlike situation which the world affords — that 
in which intelligence seeks to mould its own im- 
age. Something of this admirable relation between 
mature persons and the young inheres in all educa- 
tional work, but its perfection is found only in that 
part of the task which the parent alone can perform. 

It is quite evident that a mother who had never 
seen her child would, on beholding it, be moved by 
no motherly impulse; all the forthgoing of her spirit 
depends on the care she has taken of her offspring — 
on the love that came of that care. The child is be- 
loved, not because it is of her body, but because she 
has made it of her soul. We thus see that while 
there is a marvellous organic relation between the 
generations, the union is not of a kind on which the 
sympathies are directly founded, for the reason that 
the relation is in a way mechanical. It does not in- 
timately concern our sympathies; their movement 
depends upon the unison which care-taking affection 
develops. The value of the connection between par- 
ent and child consists in the opportunities it gives 
for a complete presentation of one being to another 
so that the identity in quality is intimately felt. 

Marital affection may be very strong because in it 

the appreciation of the other individuality is keen, 

but it lacks the perspective which is gained by the 
18 



260 THE INDIVIDUAL 

study we give to the growing child. The memory 
of our child combines a very numerous succession 
of impressions, each relating to some stage of its 
growth; in each of which we have in a way a share. 
We thus by reiterated experiences attain a deeper, 
firmer, and more varied basis of sympathy than is 
won from any other mode of human intercourse. 

If, as above maintained, the love for our children 
is due not to the organic bond alone, or even mainly, 
but in larger part to the mutual education in sym- 
pathy which the relation brings about, it is clear 
that the new learning, so far from in any way lessen- 
ing that love, is sure to increase its range in scope. 
If men depended alone for their love of their off- 
spring on the instinctive affection which they inherit 
from the lower life, there might be some reason to 
fear that an understanding of the limits and condi- 
tions of heredity would weaken the bond between 
parent and child; but as this union has in our kind 
come to be mainly the result of the educative rela- 
tion, it necessarily and naturally tends to increase as 
the demand for education advances. Among ancient 
men the amount of help the child received was far 
less than in our day. Even among the cultivated 
people of antiquity the youth at puberty was very 
generally reckoned to be beyond the need of parental 
care, though commonly under parental authority; 



RELATION OP PARENT TO CHILD 261 

the family, in the better modern sense of the word, 
was relatively undeveloped. In our day the relation 
between parent and child is evidently undergoing a 
profound though unrecognised readjustment. The 
effect of this change will evidently be to establish a 
better union than has existed before — one that rests 
not on the idea that our children are our own, be- 
cause they have sprung from us, but rather because 
we have by sympathetic education drawn them into 
mutual understanding. 

All that has been here said concerning parental 
love applies equally well to that which the child owes 
to its parents; it applies indeed to all the affection 
that is due from one kinsman to another, of whatever 
degree. The reason why this greater measure of 
sympathy is due to kindred and why it will ever be 
given, is that among them, and in proportion to the 
nearness of the relation, a common basis of motive 
and understanding may be reckoned on. All sympa- 
thetic intercourse evidently depends upon the exist- 
ence of discoverable identities; the more numerous 
these are the greater and more authoritative the 
demand the fellow-being makes upon us. This de- 
mand should be heeded from however far away it 
comes: it is most imperative when it is heard from 
our children, because of all this world we can best 
understand their cry. 



CHAPTEK XIII 



THE PERIOD OE OLD AGE 



In all the lower vertebrates, and in some meas- 
ure in the invertebrates as well, the close of life, 
except it end by accident, is preceded by a period 
of decay. Professor Hyatt and others have shown by 
extended studies of the matter that the phenomena 
of old age occur in the higher Mollusca as well as in 
other invertebrates, and that it is marked not only 
in the individuals but in the specific and other 
groups to which they belong. As this is a large 
question, one which would lead us far if we under- 
took to give it any extended discussion, we will 
note only that the fact of decadence as a concomi- 
tant of organic advance is pretty generally accepted 
by well-informed naturalists, and that it ajDplies to 
groups of organic forms as well as to their individ- 
ual members. We see how the gens, the tribe, the 
species, the genus, as well as the more inclusive 
groups, each in turn become crippled and perish. It 
262 



THE PERIOD OF OLD AGE 263 

appears, indeed, as if these branches of the tree of 
life, as well as the individual buds, were required to 
drop away in order that new limbs might come forth. 
All this is in accord with what we have noted con- 
cerning the conditions under which the organic 
world may perfect its education. We have seen that 
any continuance of the person after its service had 
been rendered was avoided. When their contribu- 
tion was made they were fitted to pass away. 

In the lower animals, because their contribution 
to the life of their kind is almost altogether con- 
nected with reproduction and the rearing of the 
young, the end is appropriate as soon as this stage 
in their work is finished. It is therefore almost a 
matter of course that the period intervening be- 
tween the end of the reproductive term and death 
should be, as we find it, brief; so brief, in fact, that 
it is of no consequence. In our domesticated ani- 
mals there can hardly be said to be a normal old-age 
period after the time of bearing young is passed. So 
far as I have been able to learn, there is nothing like 
the grand climacteric among these creatures. In 
mankind it is otherwise: in the fifth decade, at a 
point where rather less than half the normal lon- 
gevity has been attained, the breeding time of the 
female is definitely over. Among the males the 
reproductive function normally continues for some 



264 THE INDIVIDUAL 

years longer, but it may be assumed that, generally 
soon after the sixtieth year, this part of the life work 
of most human beings is done. Yet, as we have seen, 
there is what may be called a physiological expecta- 
tion of a further life of some forty or more years. 

How far the long period of normal senectitude 
in man is due to the peculiar care which civilization 
and even a decent barbarism devotes to elderly peo- 
ple, and how far it is due to some peculiar develop- 
ment of the organic motives in the species, it is not 
easy to determine. It is indeed most likely that both 
these influences contribute to the institution. The 
fact that the reproductive period of the female in 
man lasts only about thirty years, or less than one 
and a third times the period required for the full 
growth of the body, leads to the presumption that a 
change has come in man which leads to the establish- 
ment of an old age period. In all the other species of 
the mammals which are, in this regard, well known to 
us, the gestation period normally extends to three 
times or more the term of growth. Thus, mares 
which are grown at five or six may bear young from 
their second until after their twentieth year. Some- 
thing like this proportion is true of all our domesti- 
cated mammals. It is therefore evident that the 
limitation of child-bearing is a very novel feature in 
the mammalian series. 



THE PERIOD OP OLD AGE 265 

So far as I have been able to ascertain, the varia- 
tion among different races of mankind, in the period 
when child-bearing ceases, is not great. It is prob- 
ably less than the range in the term of adolescence 
or the time of puberty. It is thus evident that it 
is no new occurrence in mankind. It must have 
been established before the division of the species 
into the several existing races took place. It may 
well have been brought about in some form that 
was prehuman. It may, for all we know, exist 
among the anthropoid apes, for concerning these 
interesting species we know scarcely more than their 
anatomy, which tells us little as to their physiolog- 
ical relations to our kind. 

It is hardly to be supposed that the shortening 
of the gestation term could have been in any way 
due to the process of natural selection. It is in- 
deed evident that there could have been no such 
gain to the individuals as would serve to perpetuate 
those varieties which come to have the shortened 
term. It is difficult to see where the profit could 
have been to the species which possessed the pecul- 
iarity, for its result is considerably to limit the num- 
ber of the progeny, making man the least fecund 
of mammals, and thus to bring to the species a 
state of weakness rather than of strength. Probably 
a skilful special pleader of the cause would find some 



266 THE INDIVIDUAL 

. conceivable way in which the facts could be recon- 
ciled with the principle of the survival of the fit- 
test; but in the direct reading of them we see only 
an innovation which could have been of no par- 
ticular account in any species before the human 
estate or even to the savage man, but which fits ex- 
ceedingly well into the scheme of our higher so- 
cieties. 

While, in the species of animals below the level 
of man, we find occasional instances of survival to 
the period of old age, such individuals are but a 
burden to themselves as well as to their kind. They 
take food which is never too plenty; they cumber 
the herd which has for its important function to 
reproduce as rapidly and effectively as possible and 
to get onward by selection, or otherwise, as speedily 
as it may. But, with the beginning of speech and 
the varied enlargements that come therewith, all 
the relations of the individual to the company in 
which it dwelt underwent a great and ennobling 
change. In place of being a mere apparatus for 
increasing the numbers of the herd, and perhaps for 
its defence, the individual becomes a storehouse of 
acquired or traditional knowledge. It gains in wis- 
dom which now, for the first time, comes to have 
a distinct place and value in the organic association. 
Such intellectual gains are, in general, the great,.? 



THE PERIOD OF OLD AGE 28Y 

as life goes on to the verge of the exhaustion of the 
vital powers. It is in this way that the shortening 
of the reproductive period, or rather the prolon- 
gation of life beyond its term, becomes of value to 
man. 

We find an effective recognition of the value of 
the aged members of the society as we advance from 
the lower animals, through the savage tribes, the 
barbarians, and so up to civilized man. Among the 
brutes, even the gentlest, the superannuated are 
either quite neglected or, as is often the case, killed 
or driven from the association. In some cases it 
appears as if with the cessation of the reproductive 
powers the creatures were no longer instinctively 
regarded as members of the species, but as aliens. 
Among the lowest savages like conditions prevail. 
No care is taken of the old members of the tribe. 
In some of them they are slain as soon as they be- 
come too enfeebled to take an effective part in the 
rude duties of the society. As we rise in the scale 
of civilization to where there are traditions to keep 
and grave councils to be held, to what we may term 
the barbaric plane, we find at once a distinct value 
is set upon the old people. They begin to receive 
care and in time reverence from the younger genera- 
tion. There is probably no better simple test as to 
the separation between the mere savage and the men 



2G8 THE INDIVIDUAL 

of a distinctly higher estate, however savage-like he 
may at first sight appear, than this difference in the 
treatment of the aged folk, for much of importance 
goes with it. It is a noticeable feature in the early 
sacred writings of the Jews that, while they repre- 
sent a very primitive condition of society, so far at 
least as its impedimenta go, they are full of rever- 
ence for age. In general, it may be said that when 
the people begin to have a literature or a body of 
traditions formed into an organized religion, the 
aged comes to have a high place in its society, a 
separate but dignified position. 

As civilization advances to near its present state 
another change comes over the treatment of old 
people. They are no longer regarded as a folk to 
be set apart from the active members of the society 
to be looked up to as a class with a certain rever- 
ence and an obligation to maintain a fitting digni- 
fied and solemn demeanour. They are, as it were, 
readopted into the association and are allowed to 
go along with the business of life in the manner 
of other men and women. This change of temper 
is probably due, in part at least, to the fact that 
modern skill, in the care of the body, has done a 
great deal to remedy the defects that age brings, 
especially those of the eyes and teeth, so that those 
of fourscore can still appear as and do the work of 



THE PERIOD OF OLD AGE 269 

younger men. The generation which has seen an 
aged Gladstone guide an empire; a Von Moltke at 
the threescore limit beat down France; and a Bis- 
marck, at more than threescore, readjusting the pow- 
ers of Europe, has naturally enough given up the 
notion that a seat by the chimneyside was the only 
place for the elders. 

There is no reason to doubt that the present at- 
titude of society toward old people is one that is 
greatly to the advantage alike to old, mature, and 
young. It brings into the centre of the social life 
all the value which inheres in age: the broad view 
of life, the repose, the sense of relative values, which 
is lacking in the immature 7 and scarcely attainable 
by those who are in the full tide of living. The 
change is indeed the complement of the introduc- 
tion of the youth into the social relations of their 
people which has also come about in our time. It 
marks the modern passage from the earlier division 
of men into ranks and occupations in which women, 
youths, and the old^ were separated from the active 
and militant class. The ancient system was bred 
of the military spirit in conditions where the fight- 
ing quality was of the utmost importance to a peo- 
ple; when all the conceptions of human relations 
were affected by considerations of war. The rela- 
tive security of modern states has permitted a new 



270 THE INDIVIDUAL 

classification, or rather a destruction of the old, 
which leaves human beings to find places determined 
by their qualities. It is this readjustment which has 
served to better the position of the aged by keeping 
them in closer relation with their fellows. 

It is also evident that the value of aged people 
in society has risen with the development of the 
industrial side of our civilization. The ancient cus- 
tom of putting them to death, though rude, was, in 
a way, justifiable in a stage of society where there 
was nothing to spare, and where the maintenance 
of the aged meant insufficient food and raiment for 
the young. The growth of wealth means, among 
other things, that the society which possesses it has 
become able to pay for other than immediate bodily 
needs; it can and will support much that its ances- 
tors of remote degree in no wise valued; it can afford 
to pay largely for all that makes for the spiritual 
and intellectual environment of its life. There is 
no doubt that the presence of three or four gen- 
erations in one social edifice gives to it far more 
value than is afforded by one or two. The elders 
are, it is true, of the past. They are relatively in- 
active; they contribute little to the direct profit of 
the association, but they serve, as nothing else can, 
to unite the life of the community, to bridge the 
gap between the successive generations. 



THE PERIOD OF OLD AGE 271 

It is easy to see that as the body of the tradition, 
which makes the spirit of a people, becomes the 
greater, it is the more difficult to affect the trans- 
mission of it, from stage to stage, in the succession. 
Notwithstanding the vast resources of our printed 
records, they do not completely convey the quality of 
one time to that which succeeds it. As the spirit of 
society, that vast entanglement of blended emotions 
and understandings, grows more complicated and of 
greater value to those who live in and by it, the dif- 
ficulty of this transmission increases and with it 
the risk that much that should go on is lost in the 
passage. Thus, to take a new and striking instance 
of such failure of the past experience to be trans- 
mitted, we see in the outbreak of the late war with 
Spain, as well as in the campaigns to which it led, 
how imperfectly the traditions of one generation 
are passed to that which succeeds. Of no war has 
the record been so complete and apparently indeli- 
ble as that of 1861-'65; but for all that, the new 
generation lacked the true sense of what conflict 
with arms meant. It went about it light-heartedly, 
to be stricken with horror when they found that it 
meant suffering and death. If the declaration of 
war could have been left to those men and women 
who had a knowledge of its real nature, it probably 
would not have been undertaken. 



272 THE INDIVIDUAL 

The same difficulty in transmitting experience 
by any record is shown in the management of the 
recent land campaigns. On the face of the matter 
it would seem that there is no part of the acquisi- 
tions of man that could be so well transmitted as 
those which pertain to military duty. Ever}'- step is 
well recorded; there is an elaborate framework to 
hand on all that has been learned. Yet we see offi- 
cers of more than common intelligence utterly neg- 
lecting the very first duty of the commander, allow- 
ing their men lack the simplest, and perish from 
want of the most ordinary precautions. All doubt- 
less tried to do their duty by their trusts, but the 
only admirable successes in difficult tasks appear to 
have been on the part of the elderly men who 
brought to the work the experience gained in the 
time of another generation. If we had lacked what 
we had of the men of threescore, of men who, a cen- 
tury or two ago, would have been regarded as super- 
annuated, the result to our cause would doubtless 
have been quite other than it was. 

Considerations such as those which have just 
been presented could be indefinitely multiplied, not 
only in relation to the matters of war, but in those 
of peace as well. They are marked in the repeti- 
tion of political follies and the successions of com- 
mercial disasters. They all show the need of add- 



THE PEKIOD OP OLD AGE 273 

ing, in every possible way, to the strength of the 
bond between the generations, so that the life of our 
societies may thereby gain a larger unit of action 
than is afforded by the experience of its most active 
members. If we could make the deeds of any one 
time result from the consensus of three or four gen- 
erations of experienced men, we might hope to gain 
an element of steadiness in the development and in 
the working of our institutions which would be of 
great value to civilization. There would be fewer 
recitals of failure; fewer of those reversions toward 
savagery which set back progress. The machinery 
of civilization would move with greater steadiness 
and safety. 

There are three ways in which we may hope for 
the betterment of our means of passing on the val- 
uable acquisitions of society. It may, in part, be 
done by the improvement of the kind, by separating 
the savage and brutal stocks from the better class, 
so that degraded strains may not reproduce. To 
the naturalist this appears the most obvious means 
of gain, for the bettered life which would soon be 
thus won would be quicker to respond to all good 
influences. As yet society is not ready to adopt 
this simple and essentially humane method of bet- 
tering its estate. It prefers to punish the brutes 
who successively appear rather than to prevent their 



274 THE INDIVIDUAL 

succession. The second way is by making our his- 
toric record more effective, not only more complete 
as regards its matter, but more perfect as regards 
the lessons it conveys. Something may be done in 
this way, but those who most need the profit of his- 
tory can not be expected to obtain it. Moreover, it 
has commonly to be written by men who are parted 
from the spirit of the times they chronicle. The 
only effective way of bridging the gulf is by keep- 
ing in the life of the active generation as many 
representatives as possible of those who have gone 
before; retaining them not as relicts but as active 
sources of knowledge and sympathy. 

It may be said that the endeavour to help society 
to a better understanding of its past by extending 
the life of as many of its members as possible is, 
for several reasons, in vain. In the first place, it 
may be urged that the proportion of those who may 
live on beyond the active period is so limited that 
they would not have a sensible influence on affairs, 
and that when they survive beyond the usual limit 
they are, because of their many infirmities, of no 
value to the social system. The answer is that, even 
in the present imperfect state of our care for life, 
some do survive to the tenth decade with much of 
their original quality in them, and that, as our experi- 
ence with domesticated animals shows, whereunto 



THE PERIOD OP OLD AGE 275 

any one member of a kind attains, all may, with pa- 
tient care, be brought. There is no physiological 
reason why the expectation of life at birth should not 
be, in the course of time, brought somewhere nearer 
-{ to the fivescore years to which some few survive. It 
is, furthermore, asserted that, after an age of about 
seventy years, the enfeeblement of mind consequent 
on the general decay of the body makes the value of 
the individual very small. Here, again, the answer 
is the men themselves — exceptional men, it is true, 
but within the possibilities of culture to make normal 
men who have in the ninth decade done good work in 
varied fields. Humboldt's Cosmos, the second part 
of Goethe's Faust, and many other monumental 
works in various branches of literature, serve to 
prove the possible intergrity of the faculties in ad- 
vanced age. 

It may be well again to note that the endeavour 
to retain the aged is not an effort to preserve the 
lives of the old alone. It is but a part of the larger 
duty of avoiding premature death at all stages in 
the history of the individual. /The present waste 
of endeavour and of promise which comes with the 
loss of men and women before society has had the 
value which they might have yielded is a grievous 
and a shameful thing.) We pride ourselves on the 

economic successes of our civilization, but give no 
19 



276 THE INDIVIDUAL 

attention to the fact that as regards the most pre- 
cious things with which we have to deal, the lives 
that are in our care, we are utterly wasteful; doing 
our work in a way that would bring a mill owner 
to disgrace in the estimation of his fellows. We 
have as yet devised no method whereby these lives 
may come to us in a wholesome condition. Our 
means for caring for them after they are with us 
are entirely inadequate for the needs. The result 
is that only a small fraction of the value which 
should be harvested from a generation is really won 
to use. Every step which is taken in the ways of 
remedying this evil will help to increase the share 
of the able-bodied and able-minded aged, who re- 
main to enrich our civilization. 

It is an interesting question whether, in the fu- 
ture, anything can be done to extend the term of 
life beyond the limit of about a century, at which it 
appears now to be fixed. It is probably far too soon 
to come to a conclusion on this point, for we lack 
accurate knowledge of nearly all the data required 
for the inquiry. There are, however, certain in- 
dexes which have value; they may briefly be set 
forth. A study of longevity as it is displayed 
throughout the animal kingdom shows us that it 
varies much and often rather quickly in relation to 
the conditions of the environment. As before re- 



THE PERIOD OP OLD AGE 277 

marked, in plants and animals alike it may in this 
regard greatly differ in two rather closely related 
species. Therefore, we may conclude that while the 
system of the organic world calls for an essentially 
brief duration of the individual, it allows a con- 
siderable range in the length of the life period — ■ 
considerable in the sense in which time is reckoned 
by us. It is also to be noted that since the coming 
of man, or at least not far back in his ancestry, 
there appears to have been a sudden loss of longev- 
ity measured in terms of the period of growth. If 
this really occurred, it may be that the term is less 
fixed than we would expect it to be if the institution 
were of more ancient date. Last of all, while the 
upper limit appears, at least at present, to be some- 
what rigidly established, the variation in the endur- 
ance to the tax of life / in different families is 
marked, which seems to show that there is in this 
regard a certain elasticity in the position of the 
limit. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE UTILIZATION OF OLD AGE 

The question before us is as to what we may do 
to enlarge the meaning of old age, either by increas- 
ing the proportion of those who attain to it or 
by making that part of the lifetime to those to 
whom it comes, more fruitful to the community. 
Although there have been many incidental studies 
of longevity in man, there has as yet been no suffi- 
cient inquiry into the condition which determines the 
survival of the individual in a state of sound body 
and mind beyond the average period of life. There 
have been more or less probable conjectures that this 
or that personal habit, condition of society or of cli- 
mate, are influential in extending or diminishing the 
length of life. But, so far, none of these working 
hypothesis, if such they may be called, have been 
verified. The only fact that appears to be fairly well 
established is that the tendency to live to a con- 
siderable age is. like most other organic tendencies, 
278 



THE UTILIZATION OF OLD AGE 279 

a matter of inheritance; it being decidedly more 
common in certain families or strains of blood than 
in others. Yet even this is but a general truth to 
which there are numerous and striking exceptions. 

From the nature of the question it is evident 
that any determination as to the means whereby hu- 
man life may, in serviceable shape, be prolonged 
beyond its present average limit will be very diffi- 
cult to effect. The only possible basis of the in- 
quiry will be in experiments and observations, ex- 
tended over a wide field applied to the higher Mam- 
malia of species such as our domesticated animals, 
as well as to man. In the case of man, experiments 
will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish, 
unless perchance they were essayed either on life 
prisoners or on persons who might be willing to 
sacrifice much of their liberty for the good of their 
kind. None of these classes of opportunity are 
likely to have much value, at least in the present 
state of public opinion as to the value and sacredness 
of life. In the lower animals the difficulty of the 
inquiry, so far as the physical side of the problem 
is concerned, is not great. The trouble is that the 
index as to the survival of the mental powers which 
could there be obtained would not be satisfactory. 
"We should thus miss the main point of the inquiry, 
for the task is not merely to help people alive up 



2S0 THE INDIVIDUAL 

to the organic limit of fivescore years, but to main- 
tain them in their normal mental powers. To estab- 
lish a body of folk in their second childhood would 
be merely to burden society with a larger number 
of defectives than it has at present to care for. 

Observations on the differences in the endurance 
of the vital powers, bodily and mental alike, applied 
to those engaged in diverse occupations and dwell- 
ing in varied conditions of climate, would doubtless 
throw much light on the question of longevity. So, 
too, would a study of the physical conditions of 
those families in which the endurance of the body 
and mind was more than usually good. From such 
studies in man and brute we may hope, in time, to 
attain to the first stage of a system by which the in- 
dividual might have a better chance to secure the 
term of life which the conditions of his body evi- 
dently tender^ him. 

The question as to the means by which a sound 
old age may be more frequently attained should 
not be left, as it now is, to accidental and unorgan- 
ized inquiries. From the nature of the researches 
demanded by the problem, they are beyond the 
scope of individual study. They need to be under- 
taken by some institution where there will be an 
orderly and uninterrupted process of inquiry. Such 
conditions may possibly be found in a government 



THE UTILIZATION OF OLD AGE 281 

establishment, managed as are the bureaus of health 
of some States, or, better still, by a society under the 
control of some institutions of learning, academy or 
university. With sufficient means to pay for a fit 
staff, such an organization would even in a genera- 
tion be able to do much in advancing these re- 
searches. It would afford a centre about which 
studies of the problem would gather, so that, in 
time, perhaps within a few decades, we would be 
able to discern, in part at least, what should be 
done to attain the desired end. 

It may be well to note that, while the problem 
of the development of old age to its fit state as a 
normal and useful period of life is clearly related 
to the whole problem of sanitation in the large 
sense of that word; it is not quite identical with 
it, for the reason that the question of normal lon- 
gevity concerns other matters than the mere time 
of death. It concerns the survival in a useful form 
of the powers of mind and body which last beyond 
the normal reproductive period and not the mere 
physical life of the individual, which is indeed a 
matter of small importance. Therefore, it is de- 
sirable to separate the inquiry concerning the condi- 
tions of a vigorous old age from those which relate to 
the questions of public health in the ordinary under- 
standing of that matter. The fact that this differ- 



282 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ence exists is well shown by the absence of any con- 
siderable attention to the problems of longevity on 
the part of the existing bureaus of health. This ap- 
parently indicates that the proposed task should not 
be added to the burdens of our already encumbered 
sanitary boards, but should be assigned to some other 
organization. 

Those who are in the habit of carefully observ- 
ing people may have noticed in women who have 
passed the climacteric, or between the forty-fifth and 
fiftieth year, a considerable enlargement of intellec- 
tual interests. So general does this appear to be 
that it may be regarded as normal, and as indicating 
a natural tendency of the mind to claim its rights in 
the peculiar human period of old age. Among men, 
perhaps because there is no such distinct change in 
the work of the body or the load of care, this en- 
franchisement of the spirit is less often and less 
clearly seen; yet there too, I am satisfied from the 
instances I have observed, it tends also to occur, 
and needs but a little fostering to become normal. 

The question may well be asked, Why is it, if this 
possibility of a distinct growth in the period com- 
monly regarded as one of decrepitude, it has not 
been long and well known? I am disposed to war- 
rant even the ire of the reader who finds in my 
suggestion something that flies in the face of all 



THE UTILIZATION OF OLD AGE 283 

human experience, for what is more certain in this 
world than the decline of man in old age ? But, be- 
fore he dismisses the suggestion as preposterous, it 
will be well for him to consider the fact that there 
is a curious weight of tradition supporting the view 
as to the incompetence of old age, and that much of 
this rests upon the habit of judging men by their 
value in war. This tradition rests, moreover, upon 
a body of experience formed in ages when the con- 
ditions of life were such as to bring about enfeeble- 
ment at a relatively early time. Among the greater 
gains of civilization, we may count among the fore- 
most the improvements which enable sound folk of 
station to attain the best term of life almost un- 
broken in body, and the change in the basis on which 
men are valued. Therefore, we are here in a meas- 
ure dealing with a new problem, one that can not be 
solved by a reference to the past. It seems clear 
that the matter is worthy of a careful explanation. 
It is evident that we have in the old age period of 
man a gift of years which we should seek in all ways 
to enrich. To effect this we need to ascertain the 
possibilities of activity which it opens to those who 
may attain to age. 

The demands made on the body and mind dur- 
ing the reproductive period of life are great. This 
is also the time when the burden of care for the 



284 THE INDIVIDUAL 

young and for subsistence is most engrossing. It 
commonly happens that at some stage of the middle 
period, if at all, the man or woman is much freer 
than before to live the intellectual life. If the 
earlier years have been altogether given to com- 
monplace affairs there is no chance that enlarge- 
ment may come, with the opportunity for it which 
the falling away of other interests affords. If, how- 
ever, the capacity for any intellectual work has been 
kept alive, it may then find its chance of activity. I 
have observed a number of instances of such de- 
velopment in people of some natural ability after 
the middle of the term, say, between the fiftieth 
and the sixtieth year. In some of these. latent ca- 
pacities of a nature unsuspected even by the per- 
sons themselves, have appeared and attained a quality 
which was in its way admirable. It is not at all prob- 
able that great attainment will be won in an art or 
science where it is taken up in middle life. All 
its years are commonly too short for such winning, 
but what is really the most important gain, that of 
self-culture, can thus be had. There is, moreover, 
a strong and wholesome sense of triumph to be 
had from this late breaking into new fields, such as 
youth with its manifold interests and scant knowl- 
edge of life can not know. To the oldish person 
who is a bit weary with the repetitions of his days, 



THE UTILIZATION OP OLD AGE 285 

to whom the best of his profits have already a tire- 
some sameness, the effect of a new accomplishment 
is magical. It is like the discovery of an oasis in 
the desert. It brings again the joy of youth, for the 
most of the pleasure of that time lies in just such 
excursions into the great unknown of the self. 

Some anatomists tell us that the brain begins 
to shrink at fifty, and certain of them venture to 
assert that no original work can be done after that 
time. The facts are, however, so against that asser- 
tion as to deprive it of any value. Whatever may 
be the truth as to the brain itself, a little knowledge 
of its product in the way of masterpieces will show 
that with persons of natural ability and sound body, 
the doing power may well last for a score or more 
years past the half century. 



CHAPTEE XV 



IMMOKTALITY 



Theee are evident reasons why natural science 
should not have much of value to say concerning 
the conditions or the possibility of individual spirit- 
ual life apart from the existence of the body. The 
little that is said in this chapter finds its justifica- 
tion mainly in the fact that some — indeed, we may 
say many — physicists have, with unjustified assump- 
tion of authority, stated too much on this question; 
so that the naturalist is entitled to make his dis- 
claimer, and to set forth what seems to him the 
reasonable interpretation of the truths relating to 
it which come within the fields of his observation. 

Before undertaking to set forth what may be 
observed in the material world in relation to im- 
mortality^ or fairly inferred from such observations, 
it will be profitable to consider the position of the 
investigator of phenomena, his limitations, and the 
nature of his successes. This by way of making 
286 



IMMORTALITY 287 

it plain as to how far he can expect to see into the 
depths of the world he seeks to explore. There is 
a common notion, one unhappily shared by many 
able students of Nature, and by the most of those 
who regard themselves as naturalists, that by enter- 
ing this procession they become in some manner 
curiously enlightened as to the mysteries of the uni- 
verse — in a way made free to form safe judgments 
concerning all that goes on in that realm. There is 
much of the ancient notions concerning the powers 
of priesthood in this claim to far-reaching knowl- 
edge, a claim which is too freely accepted as valid. 
An examination of the matter shows us that 
those who are professionally engaged in what are 
termed scientific inquiry are doing a work which 
differs in no essential way from that which men 
have been engaged in since they entered on the 
human estate. Standing in face of the vast com- 
plex of Nature, men have ever been forced to ask 
the questions of why and how. Out of the multi- 
plicity of occurrences they have selected certain of 
them and have endeavoured to find how they were 
related to other happenings. At once they saw, 
as the savage indeed sees, that very often an event 
occurs because something was done before it came 
about, and certain other events follow in the same 
train. This sense of the enchainment of actions 



288 THE INDIVIDUAL 

has been the foundation of our conduct in all our 
history as men. The naturalist, using this term 
to designate all those who are intimately concerned 
with scientific inquiry, differs from his fellows of 
the more ancient employments in no other regard 
save that he has learned, or at least should have 
learned, certain rules, based on experience, which 
serve somewhat to diminish the risks of error in 
judgment, and something of technical skill in the 
application of his resources. Thus he should know 
how to verify his data and to criticise his con- 
clusions somewhat better than the mechanic or the 
merchant ordinarily learns to do. As a matter of 
fact, however, there is not much difference in the 
measure of the verifying and criticising skill among 
the abler men of any of the walks of life. Except 
for the craft knowledge, the better men in the eco- 
nomic field are as truly men of science as their breth- 
ren to whom that term is commonly limited. 

There is a difference between scientific and busi- 
ness inquiries, in that the former confess no limits, 
while the latter are bounded by the conditions 
which make for gain. The result is that the natu- 
ralist has been able, by using one discovery as a 
stepping place for the next, to push his knowledge 
as to the sequences of actions on many different 
lines for a considerable distance beyond the bounds 



IMMORTALITY 289 

of the self-evident. It is this penetration into the 
fields unknown by ordinary men which has given 
the glamour captivating to the imagination, and 
leads people to believe that those who see so far on 
dark ways must be able to penetrate the mysteries of 
life and death and make the universe plain. It is 
hardly to be wondered that these successes have de- 
ceived many of our path-breakers as to their accom- 
plishments, causing them to feel that the gates of 
all knowledge are opening to them. The results of 
the last hundred years of active inquiry have been 
again and again to double the mass of the informa- 
tion which has been gathered in the centuries since 
men began to question Nature. But all those who 
see beyond the surface are forced to recognise the 
truth that the proportion of what is known to that 
which is knowable but undiscovered is in no wise 
diminished for all the researches that have been 
made. Each thread of action we follow up reveals 
an endless number of other threads inwoven with 
it in the fabric of causation. Thus the undulatory 
theory of light, which at first glance seemed rela- 
tively simple, has on further investigation led to the 
conviction that there is not one such motion in the 
ultimate particles of the ether, but an indetermi- 
nable number of them coexisting in that substance, 
each transmitting a peculiar quality of energy, dif- 



290 THE INDIVIDUAL 

fering one from another as the waves of ordinary 
light from those we term the Eontgen rays. It 
now seems likely that we have but begun to un- 
derstand the variety of effects which are thus 
propagated by the motions of the ethereal me- 
dium: they may be indeed essentially infinite in 
number. 

In whatever direction the naturalist penetrates 
in the interminable forest of phenomena, he finds 
the same tangle of causations. He selects, so to 
speak, particular trees which he follows from their 
roots in the unseen deeps of Nature, through their 
evident branchings; but as there are no limits to 
these groups of action, he ends always with the sense 
that the known, however far his knowing may go, 
must ever be to that which is to remain undis- 
covered as one to infinity — as nothing to the whole. 
He recognises, or should do so, that all he may 
know lies as it were in one plane — that of his own 
limited nature, that determined by his own features, 
by his mind and the apparatus of his senses. The 
realms of the infinitely great and the infinitely 
small are beyond his approach. He easily recognises 
that there may, indeed must, be other types of be- 
ing beyond the infinitesimally small field which is to 
his eye the universe. Less easily, yet still clearly 
enough, he divines that the depths into which we 



IMMORTALITY 291 

ineffectively peer with the microscope are as fath- 
omless as those of the heavens, and that the order 
of the molecule and the structure of the atom are 
likely to be in dignity and complication of relations 
as well as in their interminable depth of a splendour 
like to that of the stars. Such considerations, and 
others of like quality, come to the discerning student 
when he reflects on the state of man's knowledge, 
existing or to be. How, then, is it that naturalists 
are led to the false sense of certainty as to the value 
of their explorations in determining such questions 
as the immortality of the soul? The reasons for 
this state of mind, apart from those of pure con- 
ceit, appear to be as follows: 

The most admirable result of natural inquiry 
has been the conception that all the occurrences of 
the visible universe are related in the manner of 
antecedent and consequent, or, as we say, as cause 
and effect; that nothing lies without the enchain- 
ment of actions. Along with this has come the con- 
viction, eminently well founded, that the energy 
involved in action is never lost, but only changes its 
form of activity; so that when a given amount of 
water rises into the air by virtue of the heat which 
the sun has applied to it, it returns the same amount 
of energy to the air or earth in its condensation, in 

the friction it receives in falling or in striking upon 
20 



292 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the surface. This doctrine of the conservation of 
energy, as well as the clear conception as to the 
linked quality of all actions, has taken a firm hold 
of the minds of all inquirers. They have together 
shaped the modern state of opinion as to the control 
of the universe. There can be no question as to 
the truth of these opinions, but from any well-dem- 
onstrated proposition it is possible to draw erone- ^ 
ous corollaries. In my opinion one such has been 
drawn, not altogether unfairly, but inadvertently, 
from the nature of causation and the conservation 
of energy, which is likely to lead the unwary into 
error. This is to the effect that because we find 
the unending series of antecedents and consequent, ^ 
and of energy changing but in its mode of action, 
all the operations of Nature involved in these series 
keep from step to step the same quality. This idea 
of the uniformity of action is rarely stated, but it 
is tacitly assumed. It leads to the opinion that 
sudden revolutions and changes in the modes of ac- 
tion do not occur, that the consequent must be like 
the antecedent — a proposition that has but to be 
examined in the light of the simplest facts to be 
disproved. For in any considerable natural series, 
even where the factors are apparently of the sim- 
plest, we are likely to find sudden diversions in the 
trend of events which utterly change the path of 



IMMORTALITY 293 

the actions, leading them, at some critical point, 
into an entirely new realm. 

The best, becanse the simplest, example of the 
revolutions, often catastrophic in their nature, 
which we may observe in endless variety in Nature, 
is afforded by the behaviour of water under varying 
degrees of heat. There appears to be no process of 
a less complicated kind than that which we institute 
when we change the temperature of this fluid. Be- 
ginning at a high temperature, these elements are 
necessarily dissociated. Lowering that temperature 
to a certain point the gases which when united form 
water will, under definite conditions, as by the ac- 
tion of an electric spark, fly together; at the mo- 
ment of their union producing a substance not 
resembling either of the parent elements, or rather, 
we should say, entirely different from either of 
them. So far as we can give any meaning to the 
word there is then and there created a set of quali- 
ties such as the universe did not know until the 
first molecule of water was formed. On these quali- 
ties, indeed, depend all the possibilities of organic 
life. It is not too much to say that in passing the 
critical point of temperature these two gases in an 
instant originated all the possibilities of what we 
know as life from its beginnings to the action of 
the mind and hand which shapes this very phrase. 



294 THE INDIVIDUAL 

Yet into this action there go only very simple ante- 
cedents which we can hardly imagine to contain 
in themselves all the consequences which they en- 
tail. There has to be supposed some kind of origi- 
nation in the effect; not an origination of energy, 
but of direction or quality, be it what it may. 

Following the history of water in relation to 
lessened heat, we find that from the temperature at 
which its constituent atoms may be associated in 
the molecule of water ,to the boiling point, the mate- 
rial is in a state of vapour, in no essential manner 
resembling the elements of which it is composed. 
As the temperature is lowered toward the boiling 
point, the vapour undergoes only a proportionate 
change in the distance of its units one from another; 
but at the critical point, with a suddenness which is 
like that with which it came into existence as water, 
it then undergoes a revolution, becoming a fluid. 
The difference in the actual temperature of water in 
these two states of vapour and of fluid is immeasur- 
ably small. It may indeed be assumed as infinitely 
slight, yet the effect of this difference is vast; it 
is most evident to the senses, though the hidden 
changes are probably far more numerous than those 
which are revealed. 

Following yet further the action of water under 
decreasing temperatures there are slight critical 



IMMORTALITY 295 

points which may be noted, but the most interesting 
of all we find when the freezing stage is attained. 
There is here again a crisis: without a measurable 
difference of heat, all the important qualities of the 
material are at once altered. From being the agent 
of wide-ranging activities and the basis of organic 
activity, it becomes an almost inert substance, 
effectively influenced by gravitation alone. We have 
here another most momentous of the critical points 
with which our own affairs are directly concerned, 
for, as before noted, all the possibilities of life 
are linked with the action of water in its fluid 
state. 

"What has been said of water shows that at three 
points in a narrow range of temperatures, say from 
0° to 720° C. — a very trifling part of the scale of 
heat which exists in the solar system — we find three 
sudden revolutions in the conditions, each introdu- 
cing an unforeseeable group of qualities and an 
entirely new group of relations to other things. 
But for observation these crises would be entirely 
unpredictable as to their point of occurrence or 
the nature of their results. At each of them 
we have in effect a place at which absolute origi- 
nation of quality is in some way brought about. 
It is evident that the results measured in terms of 
energy do not differ, but with infinitesimal changes 



296 THE INDIVIDUAL 

in this energy we have practically infinite altera- 
tions in the modes of its operation. 

Although from its relations to organic life the 
critical points of water are of more far-going im- 
portance than those of any other materials, they are 
paralleled in the case of all the elements and most 
of their compounds. With variations in the energy 
applied to them they exhibit like crises in passing 
which the qualities and relations are revolutionized. 
Though we have considered only the effects of heat 
in relation to critical points, it is only one of the 
agents by which such crises are produced, j The 
same element of the unexpected, we had better say, 
of creative action, is found in the chemical pro- 
cesses where the skilful manipulator may by arti- 
fice combine elements, or their combinations, so as 
to produce results never before attained in this 
world, if indeed they have ever come into existence 
until they thus come into being at the hands of 
the chemist. Again we find the same absolute 
changes exhibited in the laws of motion. Between 
an orbit of the extremest possible eccentricity and 
a hyperbola there is but an infinitely slight differ- 
ence, yet moving on the one a body returns on its 
circling way, while on the other it departs from 
it. This feature of crises not only penetrates all 
the fields of the actual in Nature, giving at every 



IMMORTALITY 297 

point distinct or indistinct creative centres, but it 
is to be found even in the mathematics, that shad- 
owy spirit of the phenomenal, for in certain of its 
series, which resemble those of Nature, we have like 
breaks in the order of succession. 

It may well be asked, how it is that if there be 
in truth this element of continued innovation in 
Nature, the existing conception of serial uniformity, 
of absolute unbroken succession, and of perfect pre- 
dictability, has ever come to exist. The answer is 
not easy nor can I hope to make it complete. In 
part, at least, it is due to two considerations which 
may now be briefly stated. 

The concept of causation by the application of 
energy passing onward from event to event appears 
to be so implicit that it leads the mind to assume a 
knowledge as to the nature of the action involved 
which it does not really possess. Thus we almost 
instinctively assume that, because we perceive the 
continuity of the events, we take account of what 
[ really occurs in these actions. The very words we 
use in noting the phenomena become what Ben- 
tham so well termed " question-begging epithets/' 
Thus it is that upon the well-laid foundations of 
actual knowledge concerning infinitesimal portions 
of the material world v there has grown up a structure 
of fancied completeness of knowledge which, on 



298 THE INDIVIDUAL 

examination, we perceive to have no substantiality. 
Yet, to the general public, and even to many suc- 
cessful inquirers, it appears as a solid edifice. 
Those who criticise their thought know, that for 
all our discoveries, vast though they be, the real 
nature of actions remains unknown; that each 
event in the streams of energy has in it something 
that is not explained; and, further, that there is in- 
volved in each turn of action which occurs at the 
infinitely numerous critical points in the processes 
of organic and inorganic change an origination we 
know not how brought about, which may, and often 
does, effect startling revolutions in the character of 
the phenomena. 

There is another influence which has made for 
the existing limited and incorrect conception as to 
the scope of our knowledge of the universe. This 
may be defined as the idol of the commonplace or 
the instinctive state of mind which leads us to as- 
sume that what we see is all that is to be known. 
The strength of this prepossession is easily and 
naturally overlooked, for even more than other 
prejudices it is self-protective, for it guards the 
mind against impressions which might serve to per- 
turb it. We may gain some slight impression of its 
efficacy in blunting the mind to the mystery of 
things by a simple experiment. As I look across 



IMMORTALITY 299 

my room my sight ranges through the air. This air 
is instinctively postulated as simple in its nature 
for the reason that I see through it and behold noth- 
ing therein. My knowledge tells me that it is in fact 
a plexus of actions and qualities so vast and com- 
plicated that if I saw it with complete understand- 
ing I should surely know more than all that has 
yet been learned of matter. For the moment this 
critical view makes a strong impression on my mind, 
one so great that it seems likely to endure; but, 
when after a moment of this thinking I look again, 
there is the same apparent emptiness, and with it 
the old suggestion of simplicity. So it is when- 
ever we look and with whatever appliance we may 
aid the vision. The mind can not build with other 
materials than it has in its store. It must pos- 
tulate emptiness as the common bond between its 
fragments of knowledge. It must suppose the com- 
monplace, the self-evident, the completely ex- 
plained, all about it, in order to have any comfort 
in life — a life without this protecting envelope, a 
world where the mysteries were allowed to crowd 
against us would be mentally uninhabitable to crea- 
tures of an estate like our own. It is well enough 
to enjoy this familiar, domesticated relation with 
our confined nature, but it should not be allowed to 
hide the deeper from us in the manner it now does. 



300 THE INDIVIDUAL 

We see the effects of the commonplace view of 
things in a more adequate way if we note the natu- 
ral history of this state of mind. We readily con- 
ceive that to the animals below man any insight 
into the realm was impossible. Nearly all their 
impressions are of the simplest order. In the lower 
races of men, and even in our own, down to very 
recent times, hardly a man found his way beyond 
the commonplace except through the momentary 
excitations of the imaginative impulse. Even this 
impulse rarely led to any sense of the complex 
of Nature. In its scientific aspect this conception 
of the infinite order about us is not only very 
modern but has been attained by few, and held 
only in rare moments, when the constructive im- 
agination dealing with the data of science enables 
us to see dimly, yet effectively, how false is the im- 
pression which the commonplace view gives us of 
the truths of Nature, and how a truer understand- 
ing, such as we now obtain only in glimpses, is to 
be the heritage of our successors of the larger time. 

It may seem to the reader that overmuch has 
been said in order to bring to light the limits of 
our understanding of the natural realm; but if 
he has had some experience with the prejudices 
which have grown up concerning the function of 
the investigator he will recognise the importance of 



IMMORTALITY 301 

such a discussion. Only by a study of these condi- 
tions can we make ready to examine the dicta, sup- 
posed to be scientific, concerning the problem of hu- 
man immortality which have been pronounced by 
able naturalists. What has been said above con- 
cerning the fundamental error of the greater part of 
the reasoning which has been applied to the expla- 
nation of natural processes, will account for some 
of the arguments against such survival. Beginning 
with the simplest, we find the ancient idea that the 
separable spirit if present in the body must have a 
definite abiding place, some organ or its equivalent^ 
by which it acts. It is easy to see that this notion 
could have been held by those only who were per- 
suaded that all a man is is revealed to the skilled 
anatomist. This view represents a fairly logical 
outcome of the old idea that the whole of a natural 
process is no more than what appears to us. As 
this argument, if such it may be called, is no longer 
adduced, it needs no mention save as an index of 
the primitive state of man's understanding as to the 
modes of natural processes. 

The argument which has taken the place of that 
just above mentioned — which is indeed its much 
improved successor, and now in its best estate — may 
be briefly described as follows: The functions of 
the body are but modes of expression of the energy 



302 THE INDIVIDUAL 

which it obtains from the appropriation of food. 
As regards their origin, these functions may be 
compared to the force which drives the steam 
engine, being essentially no more mysterious than 
other mechanical processes. Now, the mind is but 
one of the functions of the body, a very specialized 
work of the parts known as the nervous system. We 
can trace the development of this mind i in a toler- 
ably continuous series, from the lowest stages of 
the nervous processes, such as we find in the Mo- 
nerva or kindred Protozoa, to man. Thus it is ar- 
gued that, though the mental work of our kind is in- 
definitely more advanced than that of the primitive 
animals, there is no good reason to believe that it is 
other than a function of the body; that it is more 
than a particular manifestation of the same forces 
which guide digestion, contracts muscles, or repairs 
a wound. Furthermore, as is well known, at death 
all the functions of the organic body fall away to- 
gether in the same manner and at essentially the 
same time, so there is in fine no more reason to be- 
lieve that the functions of the brain persist than 
that a like persistence occurs in the digestive func- 
tion or in the blood-impelling power of the heart. 
All this, and much more, can be said to show that 
the phenomenon of death appears to possess us alto- 
gether when we come to die. 



IMMORTALITY 303 

To those who hold to the illogical idea that we 
can observe all that happens in even the simplest 
natural fact, the process of death may, in the form 
above stated, appear as a sufficient basis for denying 
the possibility of immortality. But the naturalist 
who has learned to limit his confidence in his dis- 
covering powers, will not be ready to say that these 
facts do more than raise a certain presumption 
against the continuance of the mind after death. If 
he has made a study of those modes of change oc- 
curring at what I have termed critical points, he will 
be likely to suspect that much may take place in 
the revolution that evidently occurs in dissolution 
which he does not see at all. There is, it is true, 
nothing in the visible facts which in any way leads 
to the supposition that the mind lives on after the 
breaking up of the body by which it is manifested. 
But no well-trained observer who has carefully re- 
membered his experiences with phenomena is likely 
to affirm that he finds in those of death anything 
that can fitly be termed proof that the mind does 
not survive. 

If the discreet naturalist were asked how he 
could conceive the survival of the intelligence to 
be affected after the machinery by which it had ap- 
parently been engendered, had disappeared, his an- 
swer might be somewhat as follows: He would first 



304: THE INDIVIDUAL 

call attention to the fact that in the process of re- 
production all the experience of the antecedent life 
is passed on from generation to generation, over 
what we may term a molecular bridge. Thus, in 
the case of man, a tiny mass of protoplasm, impon- 
derably small, carries on from parents to child the 
body, the mind, all indeed that the predecessors in 
tens of thousands of specific forms^ and unimagi- 
nable millions of individuals have won of enduring 
profit from their experience. Therefore, even with- 
in the narrow limits of the known there is evidence 
that the seed from which an individual intelligence 
may be evolved can be effectively guarded and nur- 
tured in the keeping of an exceedingly small body 
of matter. In a word, the facts of generation show 
us that under certain conditions life as complicated 
potentially as that which passes away from the body 
at death, may reside and be cradled in states of mat- 
ter which are, as compared with the mature body, 
very simple. It is difficult to resist the conviction 
that it is in the process of generation, in the keep- 
ing of the atoms, molecules, or whatever else be the 
ultimate form of the transmitting agents. Be it 
understood that this is not an argument to show 
that the spirit of man goes forth in some part of the 
dust of his body. The point is that the known 
properties of matter are so complex and our igno- 



IMMORTALITY 305 

ranee as to the range of these properties so grea^that 
the facts of death can not be made a safe basis for 
a conclusion as to the survival of the intelligence. 

To the argument that all we know of intelligence 
is limited to what we find incarnate in animals of 
various degrees, and that all the supposed evidence 
going to show either the survival of definite individ- 
ualities after death or the existence of intellectual 
powers in Nature, has fallen before the assaults of 
science, the careful naturalist has still to object that 
the proof of these propositions is lacking. A num- 
ber of men of no mean authority as naturalists, 
some of them well trained in experimental science, 
have, after long and apparently careful inquiry, 
become convinced that there is evidence of the 
survival of some minds after death. It is a sound 
rule to trust the observations of men who are known 
to be honest and able to the point of maintaining at 
least a waiting mind until they are shown to be 
mistaken. It is indeed in no other manner that 
we can go forward on the ways of inquiry. There- 
fore, until some demonstration is attained in this 
matter, the work of those faithful observers who 
are engaged in the painful and unprofitable business 
of seeking the truth in the abysses of superstition 
and fraud in which they have to labour, the fair- 
minded observer must withhold his judgment as to 



306 THE INDIVIDUAL 

the existence of positive experimental evidence con- 
cerning the survival of the mind after death. 

As for the assumption that there is no evidence 
of intelligence in this world other than that exhib- 
ited by man and his lower kindred, the critical ob- 
server has again grave doubts to suggest. Without 
attaching much importance to the Paleyan argu- 
ment or to any other like modes of teleological rea- 
soning to prove from design the existence of con- 
triving intelligence at work in Nature, he may give 
his dogmatic brethren pause by forcing them to 
consider the evident relation between the natural 
order and the aesthetic motives of our own minds. 
The fact that Nature is beautiful to us, that its ac- 
tions meet a swift response in our minds, is best 
explained, indeed is hardly explicable otherwise, 
by supposing that its informing spirit is akin to our 
own. This argument might go further and hold 
that because of our intellect we are forced to sup- 
pose a like quality in the power that shaped us: 
but that would be to go beyond the narrow limit 
of the affirmations which the naturalist as such has a 
right to make. 

So far I have endeavoured to represent the crit- 
ical attitude which the student of Nature is entitled, 
we had better say bound, to take toward those per- 
sons who, seeing a little of phenomena, venture, after 



IMMORTALITY 307 

the manner of the worst priests, to claim knowledge 
which they can not have. There is, however, an- 
other point of view, one from which the naturalist, 
without altogether departing from, his straightened 
path, can give some little help to those who are 
seeking an answer to the question of immortality. 
What he has to show, after the manner of all else 
that is brought into this field of debate, is shadowy 
and inconclusive; still, it may be of account. 

It may, at the outset, be assumed that the inspec- 
tion of the infmitesimally small part of the uni- 
verse which is known to us, raises no presumption of 
value for or against the doctrine of immortality. 
It might be said that there is some burden of proof 
on the affirmative; but when we consider that the 
realm in which we live is to be postulated as a uni- 
verse in which anything may happen, we are justi- 
fied in regarding the field of possibilities as quite 
open. It may also be held that in criticising the 
system of this natural realm we as men have to 
judge of it from the point of view of our own under- 
standing; when we consider that our minds have 
come forth from the cosmos, that what they have has 
been derived from immemorial training in brutes 
and men, we see the more reason for trusting the 
impressions which our minds have thus received. 

Furthermore, all successful scientific inquiry shows 
21 



308 THE INDIVIDUAL 

us that the only way to interrogate the deeps is by 
sending into them well-framed conjectures, hypoth- 
eses which state what the order of events should 
be in order to satisfy our minds. That this method 
of exploration is good is shown by its exceeding 
success: by it we have drawn from the darkness 
all we have of light. It is indeed safe to say 
that any general truth in science has been known 
to the discoverer before it appeared in the facts, 
as critically verified. Verification was sought for 
the reason that it was demanded in order to recon- 
cile the thought with the observations. It is not 
necessary to say that many of these essays at in- 
terpretation fail. They are most often found to 
be more or less ill fitted to the actual. Yet it is a 
remarkable fact that in the history of the important 
hypotheses which have been applied to the realm, by 
far the greater number have had some share of truth 
in them. Even in the field of astronomy when the 
errors have been the greatest, the successive errone- 
ous guesses have in many cases helped toward an 
understanding by assembling and correlating the 
facts so far as known. Thus, though men at first 
stagger and tumble in the path of inquiry, they still 
move on toward the truth. It is their duty to go 
forward, however dark the way, for they may be 
sure from experience that it leads toward the light. 



IMMORTALITY 309 

Therefore, we may with confidence proceed to ques- 
tion the realm with our constructive imaginations 
as to the probability that intelligence may survive 
the crisis of death. 

The first point to be noted is that the order of 
advancement in the physical realm leads, as before 
noted, to the institution of more and more compli- 
cated organization of the primitive units. The obvi- 
ous tendency is for the atoms to gather into mole- 
cules, and these in turn to climb into more compli- 
cated associations. For some way up in the series 
these societies of matter, the molecules, the crystals, 
the concretion of the celestial sphere, appear to win y 
no more than their own forms. At a critical point, 
somewhere about the protoplasmic grade of organiza- 
tion, they enter upon an altogether new field, one 
that is entered by none of the inorganic forms. In 
this field the aggregates become sensitive; they are 
educable; they gain experience and transmit the 
profit thereof to the successors of their bodies. 
Thence onward in the scale of being to ourselves an 
altogether new question is presented to these organic 
individualities. This is the question as to the ways 
in which the experience, the harvest of successive 
individualities, may be preserved and transmitted. 
How well this task has been accomplished on this 
sphere is shown by our presence here in a shape to 



310 THE INDIVIDUAL 

discuss the matter we have in mind. Without a 
measure of direction, which in common phrase 
seems miraculous, the successions of being^ necessary 
to elaborate intelligence to the human station could 
not have been attained. We have to believe that 
I something analogous to,, if not more nearly allied 
I with the sense of purpose in our own minds, has 
guided in this work. The reasons for making this 
preliminary hypothesis are, in brief, as follows: 

It is a fact that in the organic life of this world 
but one series, that which leads to man, has attained 
to a high measure of true intellect. The other se- 
ries have developed that form of mental action we 
term instinct. The birds have brought the emo- 
tions to high degrees of perfection, but the only 
commanding mind is that of man. It is also evi- 
dent that the possibility of man's development has 
rested on the successive institution of species in 
linked order, reaching down at least to the level of 
the lower vertebrate life and back to a time proba- 
bly at least as remote as the Devonian period. If, 
i in this succession of tens of thousands of species, 
, living through a series of millions of years, any of 
these links of the human chain had been broken; 
if any one of the species had failed to give birth to 
its successor, the chance of the development of man 
would have been lost. To the suggestion that there 



IMMORTALITY 311 

might have heen a replacing branch from the same 
tree of life, there is the answer that there are not, 
and so far as the record shows there never have 
been, any other candidates for the peculiar station 
of our kind save our immediate kindred. So far 
as we can- see, the possibilities of our kind have been 
limited to one enchained succession of species. So, 
when we consider what the struggle for existence 
means and has meant through all the ages, we are 
forced by this evidence to believe that there has 
most likely been a control of an intellectual nature 
over the events. It may be that the result is merely 
fortuitous; but, if so, it must have been almost as 
one to infinity against the chance that the summit 
should have been attained in man. 

If we fancy a being of an appropriate intelli- 
gence beholding the outset of the organic series on 
its long journey through the ages, foreseeing the in- 
tellectual goal, and on the way to it the innumer- 
able chances of accident which would leave it short 
of the supreme success, we may well imagine that 
this success would have appeared to be practically 
[ unattainable without the guidance of a controlling 
/ power intent on the end. It is true that any one 
of the steps toward man, say the first, may conceiv- 
ably have been won by chance, and that the proba- 
bility of the second fit advance occurring would not 



312 THE INDIVIDUAL 

be lessened by the first success, and so on to the 
end of the series; but the chance that the happy 
casts should have been continued without a fatally 
destructive break would have appeared to our sup- 
posed observer as essentially impossible. 

To put this matter into simpler form, let us 
compare the construction of the series which led 
up to man^ to the process of throwing dice. The 
chance of throwing the bits so that double sixes 
appear, is relatively small, as trial will readily show. 
Yet it is certainty itself compared to the chance 
that any group would by hazard develop toward 
man. Now, if on a second throwing of the dice 
double sixes again appeared, any critical mind would 
begin to suspect that they were loaded; and if, on 
hundreds of casts, a like result invariably appeared, 
he would have the most absolute proof that can 
possibly he had^to show that chance did not deter- 
mine the occurrences, or, in other words, he would 
be compelled to support the existence of some kind 
of control leading to the particular result. This is, 
in effect, what we find in the development of the 
series of animals which leads to man. If we are to 
judge that work by our intelligence we are led to the 
conclusion that the succession was determined in 
substantially the same way that we determine the re- 
sults of our own contrivances. It is, of course, open 



IMMORTALITY 313 

to those who have a mind to adopt the position ; to 
choose the other horn of the dilemma, claiming that 
the result is after all due to mere law, or, what comes 
to the same thing, that it arises from the mechan- 
ics of a universe without intellectual control. But 
such a conclusion is illogical, for the reason that it 
does not account for the existence of something that 
dominated chance. It is not likely to be adopted 
by any one who has the spirit of inquiry in him. 

The facts connected with the organic approach 
to man afford what is perhaps the strongest argu- 
ment, or at least the most condensed, in favour of 
the opinion that there is an intelligent principle in 
control of the universe. To those who have devoted 
themselves to natural inquiry, at the same time 
keeping their minds open to the larger impressions 
which that field affords, there generally comes a 
conviction as to the essential rationality of the 
operations. They have to consider facts which can 
not be otherwise explained, except on the supposi- 
1 tion that a mighty kinsman of man is at work be- 
hind it all. Again and again the naturalist feels 
that this or that feature of the order exactly satisfies 
him, just as he feels that the turn of a phrase or the 
shape of a thought, in an author is after his own 
mind. In fact, to the inquirer this recognition of 
himself, of his own intellectual quality in the events 



314 THE INDIVIDUAL 

he is considering, gives the sense of the highest 
pleasure which his occupation affords. By no 
means all those who successfully make researches 
perceive this quality of their work, yet I believe 
that it is present with them all. Nor is it limited 
to the naturalist. Much the same state of mind is 
afforded by the contemplative state of mind with 
which one views the beauty of the landscape, of a 
flower, in fact, any of the many expressions of the 
realm. The joy we have in those exercises of the 
intelligence arises in large measure from the fact 
that we feel the kinsman in the thing we behold. 
It is possible, indeed, that all our recognition 
of a spirit akin to our own in the forces which give 
rise to the harmonies of Nature, may be purely acci- 
dental. It may be a mere delusion, something we 
have sent out of ourselves, and not a thing which 
comes from without to us. Here again we have to 
treat the matter on the test of probability. If this 
accord happened rarely, if Nature were only occa- 
sionally in touch with our minds, we might take it 
as the result of chance, but the phenomenon is so 
persistent, so much part of man's very nature, that 
we can not thus pass it by. We have to suppose 
that there is an accord between the spirit of man 
and the ultimate of the universe somewhat like the 
correspondence which we find between the mathe- 



IMMORTALITY 315 

matics and the phenomenal order — the one being 
to the other somewhat as shadow and snbstance. 

There are very many illustrations going to show 
in a cumulative way the likeness between the funda- 
mental of natural processes and the mind of man. 
Of these I can in the present writing note but one 
group of facts, which relates to the unprofitable com- 
pletion of organic series , involving the development 
of some structure far beyond the limits of utility — in- 
deed, to a point where it becomes positively injuri- 
ous;, so as to lead to the destruction of the species 
which are affected by it. The clearest examples of 
this kind are to be found in the lower invertebrates 
where the baffling hypotheses of sexual selection 
can not be applied, because either the sexes are 
united in one body or there are no organs of vision. 
At the risk of appearing to seek the recondite, I 
shall cite the case of the Tenbratula dyphia, a group 
of the Brachiopoda, or so-called " lamp shells," 
where, as in nearly all the genera of the class, there is 
a sinus, or broad groove extending from the back to 
the margin of one valve, with a corresponding ridge 
in the other valve. So far as we can determine this 
feature has no functional value. Being thus free 
from the bonds of use, it is, as is common among ani- 
mals, curiously played with. These mesial divisions 
attain their maximum in a certain Mesozoic spe- 



316 THE INDIVIDUAL 

cies of the above-named group, where the sinus is 
deepened and extended toward the hinge until the 
cavity of the shell is practically cut in two parts, 
the only connection being by a narrow tubelike 
opening near the beaks. That all this is as un- 
profitable from an economic standpoint as are most 
of man's fashions will probably be clear even to 
the extreme selectionist. The fact that the group 
passed away, as such groups usually do, as soon as it 
had completely worked out the theme, sufficiently 
indicates that it was successful only in its perfect 
accomplishment of an idea. This is but one of 
hundreds of instances of like nature which a mere 
glance at the field of ancient life has served to 
show me. 

To those persons who are committed to a solemn 
view of Nature, the suggestion of there being any- 
thing of the fashion motive in the realm will appear 
preposterous if not impious; but to my understand- 
ing there is just as much evidence of this frolicsome 
spirit in the shapes of things as there is of rational 
qualities. It would not be difficult to make, from 
my own very limited knowledge of organic forms, a 
list of one hundred instances in which features like 
that described have been made the basis of extrava- 
gant, economically profitless yet persistent ) varia- 
tions which can only be logically accounted for on 



IMMORTALITY 317 

the supposition that they are the result of an action 
which leads to the same result as we find in the 
work of the human fancy. Among existing organic 
forms, below the plane where sexual selection is pos- 
sible, a fair inquiry would doubtless show many 
thousand such instances. It would be an interest- 
ing task to bring together these evidences of a 
quality in Nature which has been neglected by stu- 
dents, but the matter must here be passed by with 
this bare mention. 

The foregoing reasons, which are much less ex- 
tended than the matter deserves, show at least the 
general method by which the naturalist may be led 
to the conclusion that the universe is under the 
control of power in ways like unto the mind of man. 
The judgment does not lead to the assumption that 
the likeness is complete. At most it gives little 
save hints as to the measure of the kinship. But, 
imperfect as is the hypothesis, it is the only solution 
of the facts which in any measure satisfies them. 
It is more rational than any supposition which ex- 
cludes intelligence from a pervading and controlling 
position in the universe. Such, then, are our points 
concerning the matter of fact as to the immortality 
of the soul. We have the evidence from the trans- 
mission of the potential qualities of man over the 
frail molecular bridge of the egg t that the spirit 



318 THE INDIVIDUAL 

may safely be given into the keeping of other forms 
of matter than the brain affords. This raises the 
presumption that matter in certain forms far sim- 
pler than the nervous system can contain the germs 
of an individualized intelligence. Next we have 
the series of facts going to show that the presump- 
tion is altogether in favour of an intelligence of 
some kind, presumably akin to our own, which abides 
in or dominates over phenomena. 

It is evident that a perfect demonstration of the 
intellectual control of Nature, or of the capacity of 
what we term matter to be converted into what we 
term mind, or vice versa, would not serve to prove 
the endurance of our individuality after the crisis 
of death. In that condition of the universe we 
might have a common store, a sea of consciousness 
from which our individuality proceeds and to which 
it returns even as the dewdrop slips from the leaf 
into the stream and seeks the ocean. The only di- 
rect evidence that can claim scientific inquiry, which 
goes to show the persistence of the individual after 
the body dies, is that afforded by the so-called occult 
phenomena; by the alleged appearance of spirits, 
or the communication with what appear to some 
inquirers to be the minds of the departed. To some 
enthusiastic persons it seems as if it would be an 
easy task for the naturalist to turn his search into 



IMMORTALITY 319 

this field; that it is his duty by his profession 
at once to set about the task; in fact, Mr. A. E. 
Wallace, in his account of the Nineteenth Century, 
sets it down as one of the delinquencies of our age 
that it has failed to devote a fit share of attention 
to these mysteries. The reasons for this apparent 
neglect of what at first sight may seem a great op- 
portunity are at hand. They may thus be set forth: 
The mass of appearances now termed occult has 
been known to man ever since he began to watch 
the depths about him. It entered into all his early 
interpretations of Nature. Acting on his untrained 
imagination it created a monstrous burden of super- 
stitions which for ages weighed his intellect down. 
Science with great difficulty crept from beneath 
this oppression to find a clean and wholesome field 
where slowly and carefully it has won its gains 
from a reluctant but honest world as a reward for 
patient labour. To ask it to go back to the study 
of the " black art " is to bid it again into the 
stronghold of its ancient enemy: from a field of 
work where it can trust its foundations to one where 
it can not see a safe place whereon to plant its feet. 
In this there is justification enough for all the re- 
luctance which most investigators feel to re-entering 
the dark realm. 

There are other reasons which have kept the 



320 THE INDIVIDUAL 

abler naturalists, with, very rare exceptions, from 
the study of occult phenomena. The experience 
of those who have entered into those blind places 
has shown that it is now 1 as of old, almost if not 
quite impossible to obtain there data which have 
the quality needed in physical inquiry. For such 
researches we need facts altogether purified of 
hearsay or self -deluding influences; such appear 
to be practically unattainable in that dark coun- 
try. Those students of Nature who have essayed 
the methods of their art in that realm^have gen- 
erally found themselves in the position well sati- 
rized by the Greeks when " one is milking a he- 
goat and the other holding a sieve." Therefore, 
while we may wish our courageous and self-devoted 
brethren who are essaying the use of scientific 
methods of inquiry in winnowing the scant grain 
from the mass of chaff, all possible success, we can not 
be hopeful of the harvest that is to reward their 
apparently hopeless undertaking. 

The soundest reason for the neglect by natu- 
ralists of the realm of spiritism is to be found in the 
relative value they assign to the fields of possible 
knowledge. In olden times the only questions of 
real importance were felt to be those which immedi- 
ately and effectively concerned men. The develop- 
ment of natural science has bred in its votaries a 



IMMORTALITY 321 

higher state of thinking, one in which the great 
realm is seen to be more important than any of its 
parts, even our own personality; so that, in a way, 
inconceivable to the ancients, many an inquirer 
would be better pleased to know the real nature of 
gravitation than to be assured that the duties of life 
would still be demanded of him after the crisis of 
death. 

Notwithstanding their urgent disinclination to 
meddle with or be muddled by the problems of spirit- 
ism, the men of science have a natural interest in the 
inquiries of the few true observers who are dredging 
in that dirty sea. Trusting to the evident scien- 
tific faithfulness of these hardy explorers, it appears 
evident that they have brought up from that deep 
certain facts which, though still shadowed by doubt, 
indicate the persistence of the individual conscious- 
ness after death. It has, moreover, to be confessed 
that these few and as yet imperfect observations 
are fortified by the fact that through all the ages 
of his contact with Nature,, man has firmly held to 
the notion that the world was peopled with disem- 
bodied individualities which could appeal to his own 
intelligence. Such a conviction is itself worth 
something, though it be little; supported by any 
critical evidence it becomes of much value. Thus 
we may fairly conjecture that we may be on the 



322 THE INDIVIDUAL 

verge of something like a demonstration that the 
individual consciousness does survive the death of 
the body by which it was nurtured. 

It is a very extraordinary, though not, as Mr. 
Wallace thinks, a blameworthy condition of the 
public mind that now when we appear to have some- 
thing which looks to certain careful inquirers like 
proof of immortality, men in general give but 
little attention to the matter. But a century ago, 
even in the last generation, when spiritism had its 
great revival, such presumptions in favour of that 
view, as the society for psychic research has estab- 
lished, would have fired the minds of men. This 
neglect of a subject in which we might expect peo- 
ple to be greatly interested may fairly be ascribed 
to the remarkable change which has been made 
within the last half century in the attitude of men 
toward Nature and consequently toward the prob- 
lems of life. Of old, within the memories of those 
who can look back for four decades, the popular 
conception of the material realm was that of a more 
or less repulsive chaos which of necessity concerned 
man, but with which only an erratic naturalist had 
really to do. It was, as it had been from the begin- 
ning, an unfriendly place set over against the super- 
natural as darkness against the light. It is perhaps 
in part due to the series of brilliant discoveries 



IMMORTALITY 323 

which have revealed a host of actions that have been 
turned to the benefit of man! that we owe this sym- 
pathetic leaning of all intelligent people toward the 
material world, and the acceptance of it, in place of 
the old ideal refuge in a realm of the purely spirit- 
ual. In part the change is unquestionably due 
to the modern understanding as to the relation of 
man's life to that below his estate. Men have felt 
the need of a celestial realm less keenly since they 
have found that they had not fallen from it, but 
had been lifted from the dust by the forces which 
inhere in the earth. 

A yet more effective influence in bringing about 
the change of attitude of intellectual people toward 
the problem of immortality, appears to have arisen 
from an increased interest in their present life. 
The widening of the sympathies, due to the increase 
of education, and to the larger understanding of 
the world's affairs, human and other, has made ex- 
istence more attractive than it has been at any 
period within the Christian centuries, if not in all 
time. Moreover, there has been a gain in the sense 
of duty by the tasks of life, a growing sense of the 
seriousness of the business that it brings, which, if 
I may trust to my experience of thirty-five years as 
a teacher of young men, is very distinct, and, as an 

index of the temper of people, most telling. These 
22 



324: THE INDIVIDUAL 

conditions make for a devotion to the interests of 
life in this beautiful world, and against much con- 
sideration of those which may come to us after the 
crisis of death. They make for a sense of unity in 
our existence whatever be its term. 

At first sight it may appear to many persons 
that the evident decline of interest in the world to 
come, is a falling from the grace which was granted 
to our fathers, that it is a debasement of those ideals 
which led men to look past this life of trial and 
temptation to the serenity of an upper realm. But, 
on examination, we find that this conception of 
man's place in Nature — this idea that there are two 
realms, one of the flesh and the devil and the other 
of celestial purity — is no part of the doctrine of the 
great Teacher whom the churchmen profess to fol- 
low, but it is the relict of a more ancient belief in 
the power of evil spirits in the material universe. 
Science is casting out those devils, giving the world 
to man in all its beauty and perfect friendliness — 
we had better say in its kinship to him. With this 
abolition of the dualistic conception of the universe J 
the opposition of the natural to the supernatural 
passes away. In its place arises the nobler idea of 
one realm from which we are not to depart at death, 
be then our fate what it may. If, as seems by far 
the most probable, this life of man, so marvellously 



IMMORTALITY 325 

nurtured through the ages and set forth in each 
individual, is to be continued onward through the 
ages., even as the kind has continued, we may pre- 
sume that it will take with it the same blessed bur- 
dens of duty and provide opportunities of growth 
such as we have here. Thus the conception of the 
rational continuity of life serves to lessen the once 
intense interest in immortality. 

It should not be supposed that the effect of the 
change in the conception of life which science has 
brought about has diminished in any way the sense 
of duty by the present or the future. This motive 
is doubtless stronger than it has ever been before; 
stronger, because men are beginning to feel that the 
universe is their own; that they dwell in their Fa- 
ther's house, and that they remain in it, whatever 
may befall them at death. To the man of old, the 
assurance of a happy immortality had the blessed 
effect that it relieved him of the fear that he might 
fall a prey to demons. Now that he believes that 
his danger is from himself alone, the assurance has 
less value to him. If he is conscious of doing his 
duty as well as he can, any processes of life here- 
after will naturally appear no more interesting than 
his earthly conditions years hence. So we may 
judge that the present concern of our people in the 
moment and its deeds, to the exclusion of the old 



326 THE INDIVIDUAL 

interest in a life to come, is not undutiful; it means 
a bettered sense of the conditions and relations of 
that they are living. 

Although it is the purpose of this writing to keep 
near to the body of fact with which the naturalist 
has fitly to do, leaving aside the matters of faith 
and of metaphysics, it is worth while to note some 
points which, though they are aside from the path 
we are traversing, are within its field of view. First 
of these is one set forth in an interesting discussion 
of the problem of immortality by Prof. William 
James. In it he fairly meets the old argument that 
consciousness is but a function of the brain, sub- 
stantially as contractility is a feature of the mus- 
cles , by the suggestion that the mechanism of the 
brain does not directly produce consciousness, but 
acts merely as a path by which an infinite con- 
sciousness finds its way to its expression in the in- 
dividual life. In his argument he neatly turns the 
point of the so-called materialists, who, noting that 
a defect or lesion of a particular part of the brain is 
attended by the loss of some faculty of the mind, 
claim that the damaged part produced the faculty. 
Not so, he says; the part should be considered as 
the channel of the quality of the mind and not as 
its source. Expressed otherwise than he states it, 
the brain might thus be likened to a number of 



IMMORTALITY 327 

channels which admitted consciousness to the ex- 
pression which it finds in the body. In this condi- 
tion the failure of the particular element of the 
mind, on the injury of the part of the brain through 
which it manifests itself, may be accounted for on 
the supposition that the access of the spirit is 
blocked. 

While this conception of the brain as a means 
of communication between a universal diffused 
consciousness and the individual is philosophically 
interesting and is supported in a way by many in- 
teresting analogies, it can not at present be sub- 
jected to critical verification, and therefore does 
not lie within the limits of scientific inquiry. We 
have, it is true, something like evidence of a per- 
vading intelligence in the natural realm. It is not 
unreasonable to conjecture that this universal mind 
may tend to localize itself in individual forms, just 
as the matter of the universe so wins individualiza- 
tion; but so far as we can see, this view must remain 
in the field of speculation, for the reason that proof 
in the sense that the naturalist uses the term can 
not well be had. 

It may also be noted that while religious faith 
in immortality in the full meaning of the term. lies 
quite beyond the narrow and direct way of scientific 
inquiry, the phenomenal aspect of such belief, its 



328 THE INDIVIDUAL 

existence as an element in the nature of man, does 
come within the scoj>e of the naturalist's observa- 
tion. There can be no question that faith in the 
unknown is one of the intellectual characteristics 
of mankind. It appears in each of the subspecies, 
and in all with a curious intensity. It has the same 
organic right to the exercise of its soaring spirit 
that may be claimed for the trailing motive of 
science, which is indeed but an offshoot from that 
more ancient mode of traversing the realm. Ob- 
serving as we do the evidence that the organic forms 
move forth in their development toward the pos- 
sibilities of knowledge in a way which indicates 
some guidance in their quest, we may fairly ask 
ourselves whether this explaining motive which is 
directed toward the spiritual field is not making its 
way blindly toward the light in much the same man- 
ner that our kind broke its path upward through 
the lower life, or that the eye came to its task of 
seeing. This hypothesis could be, in a way, sup- 
ported so far as its general validity is concerned by 
many phenomena in the organic world, which go to 
show that parts and capacities relating to work as 
yet unaccomplished come into existence before they 
have any substantial use. Thus, to take but one 
instance out of many: the air- or swim-bladder of 
the fishes, which appears on examination of the 



IMMORTALITY 329 

habits of the creature, to be not at all related to 
swimming, and to be in the lower forms of no dis- 
tinct functional value, is nevertheless the founda- 
tion of the lung in the higher vertebrates. Even 
in our own brains there appears to be a forerunning 
of function by structure, for that organ in the lower 
savage is nearly as large as it is in the civilized man, 
so that a great part of its power is potential, await- 
ing the call to activity. 

This naturalistic view of the religious motive 
should not be taken as patronizing. The investi- 
gator in the realm of Nature is justified in feeling 
that he holds a commission to inquire wherever he 
finds matter fit for such work. He, too, is act- 
ing t as he believes are all his honest brethren in 
the order of his appointment in carrying out 
the better motives of the great inheritance. His 
means for such inquiry are limited to what is dis- 
closed in the sequence of actions. One such se- 
quence he observes in the motive of faith and the 
work to which it leads. At the same time he dis- 
cerns that the ways of that faith can not fairly be 
submitted to the process of verification. Some ob- 
servers, with ths human disposition to contemn other 
ways than their own, have scouted all faith depend- 
ing on the evidence of things unseen. This is not 
the fit course of the naturalist, whose part it is to see 



330 THE INDIVIDUAL 

what the world really is like; to apply his methods 
where they are suitable, and to pass by such fields 
as those of art, poetry, or religion, with a full sense 
of the limitations of his methods and a confidence 
that the universe is a large place, of which only a 
part is for him to conquer. 

Some attention has already been called to the 
state of mind in which men of to-day who have 
caught the spirit of their time 1 view the question of 
a life beyond the body. It is clear to all who have 
attended to the matter that this state is undergoing a 
rapid change. The key to this alteration is to be 
found in the conviction that this world is not evil; 
that it is not parted from whatever else the universe 
may contain, as evil from good; and, further, that 
man has not been cast down from a higher estate, but 
has been led up through the ages through incon- 
ceivable stages of being to his noble station of 
understanding. This, and all else which we have 
won, has brought about a marvellous reconciliation 
with the world of the creature so long parted 
from it. In large measure man's ancient fear has 
gone with the ancient ignorance which aroused it. 
There is no longer the apparent need of a refuge 
in a realm of another kind from that in which he 
is born, where he might be safe from Satan in the 
protection of the Lord. Happily, those centuries of 



IMMORTALITY i 331 

torment are with the past. Men may now as Chris- 
tians look upon existence even more cheerfully than 
the pagan Greeks in their best days; with a deeper 
joy, for they see further into the deeps. 

Looking forward on the path on which men are 
so rapidly advancing, we can discern in some part 
the state to which he is to attain when his recon- 
ciliation with the Nature about him is more com- 
pletely Effected. We can see that the meaning of 
man's organic history is to be borne in upon him 
with such effect as to give him a perspective un- 
dreamed of by the ancients. He is to see himself as 
far more truly divine in origin than the old ideas of 
his creation led him to believe. He will see that 
his life is, by way of the generations, inconceivably 
enduring; that his individuality, in one sense but 
a momentary manifestation of the life of the kind, 
is absolute and inseparable, unique even in a uni- 
verse of individualities. 

To these conceptions of the historic place of 
man and the relation of his selfhood to the stream 
of life in which it appears, there is possibly in time 
to be added evidence going to show that his intelli- 
gence in a personal form endures after the critical 
point of death. By these three considerations, par- 
ticularly on the two first mentioned, for they most 
distinctly relate to dutiful action, we may reason- 



332 THE INDIVIDUAL 

ably conjecture that his behaviour with reference to 
death will be mainly shaped. As we see by the effect 
of the relatively limited appreciation which people 
have gained as to the order of Nature, the extension 
of this knowledge is likely to bring about an affec- 
tionate relation between man and his surroundings. 
Seeing that the ancient task of elevating the kind 
which was long committed to external powers has 
now, by the gift of reason, come into his hands, we 
may well believe that he will find in toil for this 
end a pleasure unknown before. To the old noble 
motives of charity will be added a higher intellec- 
tual pleasure, such as may be had in advancing a 
great work. 

The faith in the actual world about them which 
is now opening to mentis no new kind of confidence; 
it is but an extension of the old faith over the fields 
which science has won. It in no wise denies the 
trust in heaven; it only denies that the earth is an- 
other and separate realm. When men come to know 
this truth in its fulness ,we may expect an intensity 
of devotion to the cause of betterment which was 
impossible under the old conviction that the world 
was very evil, and that the only cure for it was its 
destruction. With this motive of rational help in 
mending ills r will go a new conviction as to the rela- 
tion of one creature to another. The ancient con- 



IMMORTALITY i 333 

ception of this relation as through the common 
bond with the infinite was, with most men, too re- 
mote and unsubstantial to affect conduct. The new 
view of the nature of the union, that it is a vital 
connection re-enforced by a sense of the beauty of 
all organisms, has already, as we see in the advance 
which this century has made as regards cruelty to 
animals, gone far toward lifting the conception of 
the matter to a high plane. In time we may look 
to it for a far-reaching reconstruction of the atti- 
tude of men to their fellow-sharers in the blessings 
of life. 

In these conditions of the future, which are now 
in their beginnings with us, we may expect that men . 
living to their utmost with the cares which their 
understanding of their place in life has imposed 
upon them, giving their lives in the happy ex- 
change of services, will live on with no fear of the 
hereafter. Seeing a real though impersonal im- 
mortality in the past of their life as it has come up 
through the ages, they will look forward with a 
perfect confidence to the future which awaits them, 
sure in their belief, with a certainty denied to their 
fathers, that the Power that has brought them here 
will deal well with them in the hereafter. 

To those who may protest that this view leaves 
out of account all the vast mass of suffering the 



334 THE INDIVIDUAL 

world contains, that this suffering cries to Heaven, 
the strident of the situation can answer that in so 
far as life is not beautiful, that it does not. bring 
happiness, it is for man to mend. To him, because 
of his intelligence, belong powers of creative ac- 
tivity which can overcome the evils which mar the 
nobility of his existence. In contending against 
them he may find what remains to be found to take 
him away from the fear of death. It is in going 
forth to the fellow-man that the last of this pain 
may be stilled, for the man who dwells completely 
with his fellow-man leaves this life without passing 
through the dark portals. 

The progress in the development of the individ- 
ual in the inorganic series is relatively slow and the 
measure of the differentiation attained but slight. 
We reasonably postulate essential indifference 
among the atoms of the same element: the variety 
there may be limited to that presented by the sev- 
eral species of matter. In the molecules, it is prob- 
able that there is nearly if not quite .the same uni- 
formity of constitution, except it may be in those 
of the more complicated order, where we may fairly 
conjecture that some slight variations occur. In the 
protoplasmic unit, if such exists, there may be con- 
siderable individuality, for in that phase of matter 
the external world begins to bear in on the organi- 



IMMORTALITY i 335 

zation, inducing variety in its features. As a whole, 
however, the realm of the atomic societies appears, 
so far as we can penetrate into the microscopic 
depths of Nature, to be near the foundations of 
the process of individualization. Yet, from what 
we know of the visible world, we are almost forced 
to imagine that the atoms in turn are compounded 
in stage below stage into the depths of the infinitely 
small. 

The larger aggregates of molecules in the mas- 
sive substances and crystals have a far more distinct 
individuality than we are compelled to postulate as 
occurring among the molecules. Thus, among the 
crystals, we find that each has its own shape, so dif- 
fering from the others of its kind that no two are 
exactly alike. It is evident that in this plane of 
organization the structure feels the influence of en- 
vironment and marks the results of the action of the 
external in its abundant individual variations, each 
indicating a reaction between the internal motives 
and those which come from without. 

In the largest individuals of the universe, the 
celestial spheres, excluding in the consideration the 
organic life they may bear, the individualizing pro- 
cesses at work in the inorganic realm attain the 
summit of their action. So far as we can judge 
from the few of these bodies we know about, each 



336 THE INDIVIDUAL 

has its peculiar stamp, each acts and reacts on its 
surroundings in a measure different from all others. 
Thus, in the case of our earth and its moon, we have 
two bodies differing the one from the other in very 
many features. The one is a mere mass of matter 
in a sense inert, and the other quick with a host of 
varied impulses. So, too, the sun and Mars, the 
bodies next in the order of knowledge, are each sep- 
arated in quality from all others we know. It is 
likely that a complete account of the hundred or 
so million suns, and perhaps the thousand million 
planets within the range of vision, would show us 
no repetitions, but ordered individualities, each 
stamped with the mark of its varied relations to 
environment. It should be noted that these varia- 
tions are not really stamped in the sense that they 
are due to one impression. They are the product 
of continued action and reaction, such as makes 
each particle of matter in the universe dependent 
on every other throughout all time and space. 
Thus, our earth each day receives a vast tide of 
energy from the sun which it appropriates to ac- 
tivities, ranging from the currents of the sea to 
those of our own veins, while every atom feels the 
pull of every other in the realm and marks the 
result in its doings. No one can conceive these ac- 
tivities of a celestial sphere without feeling, with the 



IMMORTALITY 337 

great Kepler, that they are really living bodies, as he 
deemed the earth to be. They have indeed an or- 
ganized life, lacking only the singular complications 
to which the organic body attains, which afford^ a 
capacity to store experience and to transmit it to 
successors. 

Out of this great world of physical individuali- 
ties which knows no other bond than that which 
unites the units of each kind in a simple classifica- 
tion, all alike within their several species, there 
comes no advance. Such as they are, save for minor 
variations impressed upon them by their environ- 
ment, they are throughout the universe. There is in 
them no evident sense in which each unit forms a 
part leading toward ultimate remote purpose. The 
individuals, except perhaps the atoms, come into ex- 
istence and pass away; but these comings and goings 
are not organized in any evident order; there is no 
true birth or death. There is no perception of the 
environment; when it affects these structures it does 
so directly in a mechanical way. There is no record 
of the action save in the form it brings about. The 
tendency of each of these low-grade individuals of 
the inorganic world is to attain their fit shape and 
to remain therein unchangeably. They are, in a 
word, static equilibriums. Their state marks the 
perfect equipoise of all the forces which enter into 



338 THE INDIVIDUAL 

their- making. What to the higher organic indi- 
viduals is death is their perfection. 

Somewhere in the advancing complexity of the 
I; inorganic, doubtless in the compounds made possible 
J by the properties of water, there came upon the 
hitherto lifeless earth a living form. It would be 
futile to conjecture the shape of this creature or 
even its chemical composition. The only point of 
which we may be sure is, that it was. in the larger 
meaning of the word sentient; that in some way 
and in some measure took account of its environ- 
ment by means of impressions of the environment 
on the organism. It is a fair supposition that this 
primal organic body had a more definite mode of 
appropriating materials for its services than any 
of the inorganic forms; that it was more distinctly 
endowed with a capacity for multiplying itself than 
any of them have. It is also probable that it was a 
definitely limited form and not a diffused sheet of 
living matter on the floor of the waters in which 
it originated, such as the so-called Batliybius was 
at one time supposed to be. But the essential point 
was that this new aggregate of matter had passed a 
critical point, like that which is passed when solid 
water enters the fluid state, a new realm was opened 
to the sentient and therefore educable, ever-ex- 
panding being. 



IMMORTALITY 339 

From the beginning of the organic individual 
to man we have the history of the new type of indi- 
viduality — the type that progressively, more and 
more, is fitted to appropriate knowledge from the 
outer world to win profit therefrom, and to trans- 
mit that profit to the successors of their bodies. 
These harvesting and storing individuals continue 
to gain in station, but all the while doing their 
work unconsciously with no sense of what it means; 
doing it through the life of innumerable species, 
until finally the plane of man is attained. Then 
there comes another critical point, of the first order, 
so to speak, one equal in importance to that which 
led from the non-sentient to the sentient. This 
crisis came with the development of self-conscious- 
ness and with it the moral estate. The rest of the 
story — it is that of a day against the ages of lower 
life — shows us the progressive enlargement of 
knowledge and of the sense of duty which comes 
therewith. So far as we can see, this enlargement, 
as yet perhaps hardly begun, will close the account 
of life on this sphere. 

Looking back over the series of events which 
have led to the development of man, the most strik- 
ing feature in the history is the progressive aggran- 
dizement of the individuals which form the long 

stairway. At each step upward we find the crea- 
23 



340 THE INDIVIDUAL 

tures receiving more of the store which the ancestry- 
has harvested from the environment. Even where 
it is least, this body of winnings from experience in 
action defies the imagination which seeks to measure 
it; but when we come to man it is magnified many 
thousandfold. Yet this store is not a mere common 
stock of impressions, a like gift for each of the units 
of the series; it is, on the contrary, so dealt out to 
them that each has a portion distinct from every 
other. In a word, these inheritances are profound- 
ly interactive among themselves, in such a manner 
that it is almost inconceivable that a like store be- 
comes the property of any two individuals. 

It is at once so important and so difficult to ap- 
preciate the full meaning of organic individuality 
that it is well to consider some of the familiar facts 
of the matter as they are exhibited among men. It 
is a common observation that while all human be- 
ings resemble one another in a general way and some 
are nearly alike, there has never been a case when 
two of the greatest similarity were brought into a 
close comparison where the individuality of bodily 
features was not at once apparent. It is probable 
that of all the men who have ever lived no two were 
ever so identical in form that a tolerably skilful 
observer would not be able to distinguish them. 
Yet these features of the exterior are but a minute 



IMMORTALITY 341 

part of the aggregate that makes up a human being. 
When we consider the intimate structure, especially 
that of the brain, we see that it would indeed be 
miraculous if there were not a very great number 
of peculiarities characteristic of each of the human 
units. From what we can judge of the comparative 
mental states, it seems most probable that the differ- 
ences in the mental qualities of men are far greater 
than those of their bodies, so that if we could ex- 
pose these hidden features to view we would have, in 
place of our specifically similar comrades, a wonder- 
ful — indeed, we may say almost horrible — diversity 
before our eyes; a diversity exceeding all that is 
presented to us by the wide range of bodily form 
which the whole vertebrate series presents. Some- 
thing of this we recognise in the minds of those 
people we have known well; more of it we can ap- 
preciate when we think of the difference in ca- 
pacities of particular kinds, such as those for music 
or mathematics, where the capacities may range from 
nearly nothing to the highest point in the scale 
which we can conceive. 

There is reason to believe that the inheritances 
which shape the body and the mind alike are pro- 
foundly interactive in the germinal stage during 
which the individual is in process of construction. 
In all the higher life two beings join in giving their 



342 THE INDIVIDUAL 

dissimilar stores of inherited experience to the nas- 
cent unit. Before birth, and in less measure after 
birth, these diverse stores of transmitted influences 
interact. We can not imagine the range or scope of 
the interaction, but we are sure that it is between 
innumerable hosts, and that the adjustment can not 
in any two cases be exactly the same; at least the 
chance is practically as one to infinity against a re- 
sulting identity either in body or mind. It is, as I 
here find, quite impossible to convey to the reader 
an adequate sense of the conditions of inheritance, 
which make for individuality even in the simpler 
organic forms; but these operate with vastly greater 
effect as the complication of the transmitted influ- 
ences is increased as we find them in man. 

As soon as the new life is established in the 

egg, even before it sees the light, it begins to be 

affected by the environment, which sends in its mul- 

tigenerous of impressions. Each of these reacts on 

and qualifies the ancestral store of capacities until, 

at the adult stage, every part of the old store has 

been more or less readjusted by the new experiences. 

! This last process completes the individualization of 

; the creature, leaving him distinct and separate in 

{ the world — a being the like of which has never 

before been and will never again appear. To finish 

the individualizing process in man there comes 



IMMORTALITY . 343 

the self-consciousness, and with it the moral sense 
which causes the creature to feel, though happily 
not in its full truth, the degree in which he is 
parted from his kindred and from the universe. 

It is hardly possible adequately to state the isola- 
tion of the individual man. Notwithstanding all his 
endeavours through friendly association to win a 
sense of identity with his fellow and with Nature, he 
is doomed to remain apart and in large measure 

r 

alone. He has to live and to bear as best he may the 
tragedy of his individuality.' His only way to relief 
is by the sacrifice of his self to his fellows; in casting 
so far as he can his personality into the stream of life 
where it may in a measure be merged in the com- 
mon larger being. Yet for all the relief this pre- 
cious resource may give, this sovereign individual 
has to remain isolated, waiting what may be for 
him the future of the series of actions which 
have lifted him from the dust to this great estate. 
With this sense of isolation goes that of the ap- 
parent temporariness of the individuality. This 
quality has only been fully appreciated since we 
have come to an adequate conception or rather pos- 
tulation of the duration of the past, for the truth 
is beyond all understanding. Against these ages 
the life of the person is scarcely more than that 
of a wave of light in the path the impulse follows 



344 THE INDIVIDUAL 

on its way from the sun to the earth. As a matter 
of proportion it is a mere nothing, or at least of no 
more than atomic value. 

At first sight these features of isolation and of 
brevity make a very powerful impression on the 
beholder, one which is the gravest note in all lyric 
thought and poetry. The cry of " What is man? " 
from the Hebrew singer has been re-echoed in all 
ages and lands wherever men have attained to the 
dignity of contemplation. Our better knowledge, 
while it manifolds our sense of the separateness of 
the individual life and of its brief duration, has 
gone past those distressing features to show us, in 
part, what they mean. It sets forth the person as 
a unique storehouse of experience; as a garner of 
the times that have been; as the embodied his- 
tory of the past. In a word, it gives a value to the 
organic individual of all grades which exists in 
nothing else we know in the realms about us. 

While something of the singular value of the 
individual pertains to all the units of organic life, 
it is essentially peculiar to that of man; for in him 
we have not only the vast store of experience, but 
the newly added feature of self-consciousness and 
all that goes therewith. This addition to the an- 
cient qualities of the animal places our kind in a 
distinct sphere, separated from that which is lower 



IMMORTALITY 345 

by an interval effectively as great as that which 
parts the group of organic units from those of the 
inorganic realm. It may be, as some have sup- 
posed, that self-consciousness and the moral sense 
have their beginnings in the higher brutes. They 
most likely have in the dog, a creature which has, 
in a way, been forced to acquire something of 
human nature. Even if this be the case, the value 
of the crises which induced the perception of the 
selfhood we find in man remains. Its importance 
is not changed, even if it prove less sharply sepa- 
rated from the lower life than it appears at first 
to be. 

The great significance of the individual man 
fairly raises the presumption that his place in Na- 
ture has a meaning that is not to be measured by 
the length of his life in the body. Looking / as we 
must do, for a purpose that justifies to our under- 
standing all this doing of Nature, is it not reason- 
able to suppose that one at least of the designed 
results is attained in the creation of these his- 
toric personalities? May we not fairly regard 
these persons as containing and preserving the 
permanent gain which comes from the work of 
the visible universe: as the indestructible profit 
of a work which otherwise would offend us by its 
apparent resultlessness? I am aware that these 



346 THE INDIVIDUAL 

conjectures are open to the objection that they 
seek to explain Nature by man, but there is no 
other way to this explanation save by the human 
understandings won from ages of selected experi- 
ence with this world whence it came. It is not, 
as was of old imagined, a stranger in a strange 
land who makes such judgments, but a very native, 
with the right to an opinion on what is in fact a part 
of himself. 



INDEX 



Aged, the, appreciation of, 267. 
the place of in society, 268-270. 
as links between the genera- 
tions, 271-275. 
Animal forms, development of, 

113, 114. 
Atoms, 2. 

Bjerkens, experiments of, 10. 

Catastrophic changes, 292. 
Causations, the tangle of, 290, 291. 
Commonplace view, the, 29S-300! 
Consciousness, imperfection of, 
82, 83. 

and the brain, Prof. "William 
James on, 326, 327. 
Conservation of energy, 291, 292. 
Critical points, 293-297. 

in development, 338, 339. 
Crystals, 6. 

individual peculiarities of, 8. 

Dead, the, grief for, 224. 
observances concerning, 245, 
246. 
Death, a corollary of advance- 
ment, 24, 25. 
some aspects of, 27. 
a fundamental fact, 49. 
the advantage of, 50. 



Death, suppression of the selfish 
. dread of, 214. 
altruistic dread of, 215. 
the place of, in the scheme of 

life, 225. 
public opinion regarding, 239, 

240. 
premature, an evil, 226-228. 
protection against premature, 

228, 229. 
economic loss by premature, 
230. 
Demonology, 204, 205. 
Diversities, infinite, 340, 341. 
Duty, sense of, 325. 

Enchainment of actions, 291, 292. 
Ether, the, 13, 14. 
Evolution, intellectual control of, 
309-312, 317, 318. 
hazards of chance, 312. 
the mechanical theory of, illogi- 
cal, 313. 
Existence, the new view of, 330. 
Expression and intellectual work, 
151, 152. 
various degrees and motives of, 

153-155. 
in the face, 155-159. 
insufficiency of words for, 156, 
157. 

847 



348 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



Extern alization of the inner life, 
150, 151. 

Face, the, natural history of, 157- 
1G0. 

in the study of individuality, 
163. 
Faces, of the lower animals, 157. 
158. 

of mammals, 159. 

of monkeys, 160. 

of cultivated men, 161. 

of children, 162. 

study of, 162, 163, 181, 1S2. 
Faith, religious, 327. 

the naturalistic view of, 329. 
Fear, 188. 

as a quickener of the intelli- 
gence, 189, 190. 

original necessity of, 190. 

in early man, 190. 

valour, the complement of, 191. 
Fear, the, of death, 193. 

wanting in animals, 193, 194. 

activity as a cure for, 199, 200. 

altruism as a remedy for, 201, 
202. 
Fears of the imagination, 194. 
Fellowship, our true, 250. 
Forerunner, a, 328. 

Generation and the survival of 

mind, 303-305. 
Generations, the interdependence 

of, 241-243. 
Gravitation, 9. 

Hollisan, Professor, 220. 

Human relations, the higher order 

of, 176, 177. 
Hypothetical inquiry, legitimacy 

of, 307, 308. 



Immortality, the belief in, 208. 

the search for further evidence 
of, 208, 209. 

some arguments against, re- 
viewed, 301-306. 

experimental evidences of, 
doubtful, 305. 

presumptive evidence of, 317, 
318. 

facts indicative of, 321. 

religious faith in, 327-330. 
Individual, definition of, 70. 

the, a centre of natural forces, 
71-75. 

the, a centre of organization, 75. 

development, the process of, 334. 

life, the place of, in Nature, xi. 

man, the isolation of, 343. 

man, the place of, in Nature, 345. 
Individualities, order of, 76. 

greater and lesser, 77. 

aggregated, 78, 79. 

secondary, 80, 81. 

associations of, 81, 82. 

human societies the culmina- 
tion of, 82. 
Individuality, organic, beginning 
and growth of, 338, 339. 

familiar facts of, 340. 

value of the understanding of, 
179-181. 

in relation to the conduct of 
life, 182, 183. 

in relation to intercourse, 183, 
184. 

in relation to posterity, 184, 185. 

as a help to self-appreciation, 185. 

appreciation of other, 164, 165. 

as affected by love and affec- 
tion, 165, 166. 

as affected by enlarged under- 
standing, 167. 



INDEX 



349 



Individuality, appreciation of 
other, as affected by relations 
of friendship, 168, 169. 
obstacles to, 169. 

Individualizing process, the uni- 
versal, 15-17. 

Inheritances, interaction of, 341, 
342. 

Inorganic individualities, invaria- 
bility of, 22. 

Insects and vertebrates, mental 
processes in, 125, 126. 
importance of the differences, 
127. 

Instinct, 115, 118-120. 

Institutional life of civilized so- 
cieties, 144, 145. 

Intelligence in Nature, man's rec- 
ognition of, 313-315. 

Intelligences, individual, en- 
chainment of, 84, 85. 

Kinship, 251-254. 

degrees of, 254. 

double, 258. 
Knowledge, unreached depths of, 
289-291. 

Latent capacities, 284, 285. 
Life, the term of, 25-27, 43. 
economic value of, 240, 241. 
economy and waste of, 275, 276. 
possibilities of extending, 276, 

277. 
prolongation of effective, 279- 
281. 
Life insurance, 217. 
Likeness, the essential, of men, 

the assumption of, 170-172. 
Living, the, and the non-living, 

18-23. 
Longevity, determination of, 43-49. 



Longevity, a specific character- 
istic, 51. 
of the lower life, 52, 53. 
of the vertebrates, 54-58. 
indefinite, 55, 56. 
period of growth and, 59-61. 
shortening of man's, 61-67. 
limit of man's, 67-69. 
conditions of extended, 278. 

Man an individual, 1. 

Material Nature, changed views 

of, 322. 
Memorial beneficences, 248, 249. 
Molecules, 4. 

individual peculiarity of, 7. 
Monuments, 246-248. 
Mortality the price set on ad- 
vance, 243. 
Motives, gainful, 142, 143. 

the new, 331. 

exalting character of, 332. 
Mourning, 246. 
Mud wasp, the, 35-37. 

Natural, the, and the supernat- 
ural one realm, 324, 325. 
Nervous system, the, 114-117. 

Oblivion, dread of, 220-223. 
Occult phenomena, 318. 

not taken up by science, 319-321. 
Old age, period of, 262-267. 
mental vigor in, 282, 283. 
Organic, the, cbangeableness and 

educability of, 22-24, 42. 
Organic body, the lower, 106, 107. 
apparent simplicity but real 

complexity of, 108. 
capacity of, for storage and 
transmission of inheritance, 
109, 110. 



350 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



Organic life, and temperature, 98, 

99. 
and time, 99-101. 
and quantity of matter, 101, 102. 
and space, 103. 
and the mass of activities, 103, 

104. 

Parental care, 258-261. 
Plants and animals, 111, 112. 
Play of birds and animals, 132. 
Present life, enlarged interest in, 

323. 
Punishment, cruel doctrines of, 

206, 207. 

Eeactions, mechanical and psy- 
chic, 149. 
Eeason, 125. 

Belief associations and brother- 
hoods, 217. 
Eelief, private, and government 

pensions, 219. 
Eeproduction, by offshoots, 28. 
sexual, or double, 29, 30. 
the egg and the seed, 31, 32. 
provisions for the new life, 34- 
41. 

Science and religion, 199. 

Scientific concepts, emotional con- 
tent of, 177, 178. 

Scientific inquiry, scope of, 286- 
288. 

Self, the, a part of the whole, 186, 
187. 

Self-consciousness and the moral 
sense, 344, 345. 

Self-devotion, an alleviative of 
death, 143, 144. 
courageous forms of, 195, 196. 

Self-sacrifice, 140. 



Separation, increase of, with ad- 
vancing organization, 178, 179. 

Skeletons, vertebrate and articu- 
late, 117-123. 

Social advance, basis of, 147. 

Societies, animal and human, 141, 
142. 

Society, the saving quality of, 146, 
147. 

Spiritualism, conditions of, sci- 
entific inquiry into, 210-212. 

Spiritual revelations, supposed, 
triviality of, 209, 210. 

Superstitions, 197, 198. 

Swiss, the, and the Latins, 233, 
234. 

Sympathetic action and motives 
in animals, 128-132. 

Sympathetic motives, in man, 133. 
speech and, 133, 134. 
religion and, 134. 
war and, 134, 135. 
property and, 135. 

Sympathies, the, rationalizing of, 
136. 
expansion of, 137, 138. 

Sympathy and self-interest, 137. 

Sympathy, helpfulness of, 139. 
secondary influences of, 139, 
140. 

Terebratula dyphia, 315. 
Thought, inherited, 87, 92. 
" seeds of," 89. 
spontaneous, 90-95. 
and the conception of indi- 
viduality, 95, 96. 
as a source of intellectual values, 
96, 97. 
Transmission of material features, 
85, 86. 
of thought, 86, 87. 



INDEX 



351 



Transmission of qualities, 255-257. 
of experiences, failures in, 271, 

272. 
Transmitters, men's duties as, 

243-245. 

Universe, the, the anthropocen- 

tric view of, 104, 105. 
our possession, 223, 224. 
Units, organic and inorganic, 75, 

76. 
Unperceived processes, 297. 
Unrecognized greatness, 173. 



Valour, evolution of, 191. 

the type of highest, 199. 
Variations, structural, extrava- 
gant, 315-317. 

War, the argument for, 230, 231. 

fallacy of, 232, 233, 236. 

wastes of, 234-237. 
Will, the instruments of, 123, 

124. 
Women, heroism of, 215. 
Worlds, 11, 12. 

interchanged action among, 13. 



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